Guides: D4D Accessibility Guide: Friendly URLs

Milestone Overview: Friendly URLs

Each guide and each page of the guide a has a friendly URL.

Friendly URLs are easier for users to remember and to type than random alphanumeric URLs. They should also give users and idea of what the page content is about.

Accessibility Best Practice

Formatting Your Friendly URLs

Use lowercase and dashes between words (friendly-url-example).
- Why dashes?
  - dashes break up the words making them easier to read
  - dashes are easier to type users than underscores (friendly_url_example)
Use the existing tab name when it’s short
- If the tab is more than 4 words, you’ll need to be a little creative. Focus on what is easy to remember, spell, and gives the user enough enough info about what page/tab would be about if they didn’t have any more context

Avoid Editing Existing Friendly URLs

If you have existing friendly URLs that don't match the formatting recommended above, talk to your system administrators. Changing the existing URL will break the link to your guide page that might be in other platforms (i.e. websites, course materials, etc.).
Try to avoid editing friendly URLs too much after your guide is published, it will break the links users may already have.

LibGuide Help Center Resources:

Customize a page's friendly URL - Help Center
Springshare LibGuides knowledge-base FAQ about Friendly URLs for pages within a Guide.
Customizing a guide's friendly URL - Help Center
Springshare LibGuides knowledge-base FAQ about Friendly URLs for a Guide.

Examples

By default guides and pages have URLs that are not easily readable, like this: https://nyu.libapps.com/libguides/admin_c.php?g=1043727&p=7573075
Instead, use this: https://guides.university.edu/accessibility/friendly-url

Additional Resources

Web AIM Links & Hypertext
Hypertext links are one of the most basic elements of HTML, as its name implies (HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language). As such, making hypertext links accessible is one of the most basic and most important aspects of web accessibility. For the most part, this is an easy task. Standard hypertext links work with all technologies and platforms and users of all abilities can access them, whether directly or through the use of some sort of assistive technology. As might be expected though, there is more to hypertext link accessibility than simply creating a link. Some types of links are more accessible than others, and some types of links are completely inaccessible to people with certain types of disabilities. Because links are so basic to the functionality of web content, inaccessible links are one of the most severe barriers to overall accessibility.
Accessible U: Hyperlinks
You can improve both the usability and accessibility of hyperlinks by embedding them in text and making them clear, concise, and meaningful out of context. Sighted users visually scan pages for links to help them find what they're looking for. People using screen readers can do the same thing: At the touch of a button, they can pull up a list of all the links on a page. As you learn more about links on this page, think about links that would be most useful to you in a list like that.

Project Management Suggestion

Your organization may have an existing style guide for how webpages and friendly URLs are formatted. Check with your system administrators.
If the friendly URL formatting in your system isn't consistent encourage the dash formatting for all new pages and guides as a best practice for authors.