Audit and fix our link text for screen reader users

[owenatgov]

What

Review all our links on the website for quality of link text ie: if it can be understood out of context by a screen reader user, identify which links need improvment, write and deploy new link text.

Work related to this can be found in the accessible content audit worksheet (design system team access only).

On 6 November, we decided that we will first scope content improvements on links that:

• are internal site links
• refer and link to our styles, components and patterns

We'll then assess any other improvements.

Why

This is to address 2 related issues raised in the 2024 DAC audit of the GOV.UK Design System website:

1. Links on website missing context #4023
2. Non-descriptive links on the website #4013

This issue will enable us to either resolve or explicitly decide not to solve these issues.

This issue is also split off from #4193 in order to make the wider content audit work easier to manage.

Who needs to work on this

Website accessibiltiy squad (driven by content designer)

Who needs to review this

Website accessibiltiy squad

Done when

• We've collected all links on the website
• We've reviewed all links on the website for text quality
• We've drafted amendments to first phase: link text that refer and link to our styles, components and patterns
• We've decided whether to do more
• We've published those updates to the website

PRs to update links

• Update the links on the blogs, talks and podcasts page #4303
• Update the links on homepage, root pages and Get Started sections #4304
• Update the links on Styles section #4306
• Update the links on for Community and Accessibility sections #4307
• Update sub-table link text in nunjucks macros #4309
• Update links to WCAG criteria to make them clearer #4313
• Update remaining links on component and pattern edits from worksheet #4319
• Update links and link text in yaml govuk-frontend#5428
• Update link to 'propose change' in the pre-footer #4320

[kellylee-gds]

Link text fixes scoped to component and patterns for now. Once fixes have been made on the website, we'll assess whether we have time and capacity to take on more link text edits this cycle

[calvin-lau-sig7]

@owenatgov has been working on edits in the PR #4278. To support and document this work, I'm working to:

1. create a step-by-step guide, expanding on the "Help assess descriptive links" directions in the worksheet – still to do as of 8/11)
2. create a [rough style guide on how to edit link text as a Google Doc] – done as of 8/11, will update as work progresses (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EAKA94PnLj847Dfq_N6kmePfA02TN_uNrrMg9ho5VTg/edit?usp=sharing)

Also, here's a sketch of the process steps I've done do far for step 1, attached.

[calvin-lau-sig7]

Further work:

Look at suggested "Possible improvements" flagged in accessible content audit worksheet.