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Re: URL Question

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From: Duff Johnson
Date: Feb 2, 2016 12:40PM

> John asked: "In a pdf document when a URL is hyperlinked what are best practices? Some say to hyperlink with the URL in parentheses after."
>
> In the best case, I prefer create the link using text that clearly states where the link will take you. Then you can do one of two things with the actual URL. Either as John mentioned place it inside of parentheses, or place the links at the bottom of the page using footnotes.

The difficulty with placing the link in footnotes, with current-generation end-user software (both creation and consuming) that I'm aware of, is that most software does not handle footnotes well in terms of ensuring the PDF is genuinely accessible (i.e., text and URL are logically associated)..

So I'd suggest that at this time, to ensure that the URL is associated with text for AT purposes, it makes more sense to include the URL inline.

> URLS often fail to provide a clear indication of the destination of the link. However since PDF and Office documents are often distributed as paper documents having the actual URL also available makes perfect sense.

Totally agree with this - but I do suggest (today) that inline URLs make for a lot less remediation of tags after PDF generation.

Duff.