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Full URLs in PDF documents

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From: Christine Hogenkamp
Date: Feb 27, 2023 9:47AM

Hello everyone,

My team and I were discussing URLs in PDFs and instances where you might
have the full URL instead of a descriptive text for the link, such as
footnotes or references section in a report. The discussion was whether it
was OK to have an occasional instance of a full URL like that as-is, or
whether there are any steps we should take in the formatting of the URL (ie
InDesign has an alt text option we could place descriptive text or
instructive text). The question was basically, was it too annoying or
cumbersome for the reader to have to listen to the whole URL?

My opinion in the matter was that I thought it was OK to have a full URL
as-is, as long as the URL was in a place where the reader could get context
why the URL was there (ie under a header "References" or similar) and my
feeling about full URLs is that most screen reader users would probably
know how to skip to the next element on the page, if they found themselves
listening to "H T T P colon backslash backslash W W W ..." etc. so that we
wouldn't be trapping them in having to listen to the whole URL.

I also thought it might not be ideal to use alt text because that's not how
the text presents visually, so that might be confusing to users who can
read some of the visible text themselves but also use a screen reader too
as additional help. Usually our goal is to have the screen reader
experience match the visual experience, as much as reasonably possible.

So I welcome any thoughts on this, since so many of you are more
experienced in accessible PDFs than I am and have dealt with all the little
particular elements and how they should be formatted. Thanks in advance!

*x*
*Christine Hogenkamp (She, Her)*
Front-end Developer
ContextCreative.com <http://contextcreative.com/>;