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Re: Full URLs in PDF documents

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From: L Snider
Date: Feb 27, 2023 11:49AM

It is a good question. Some documents are meant to be printed, and in those
a full URL is needed. Even though I always advise to do descriptive text
over URLs, it isn't always possible. Now in the case of URLs, if you have
control over them, try to make them descriptive. at least then people who
can't see them can get an idea of what the linked page is about...Also I
avoid URL shorteners when I can, in 10 years many won't be around and they
are dead (there are ones that are more permanent, but really nothing is
permanent after 20 years or so).

I find the link issue is totally context dependent in documents, in my
experience try to go for the descriptive text. Also if there is any way to
change a sentence that has a URL in the middle of it, and moving it to the
end-that can work too. Just depends on how much you control.

Just my two cents!

Cheers

Lisa

On Mon, Feb 27, 2023 at 12:48 PM Christine Hogenkamp <
<EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> 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/>;
> > > > >