Spelled Out Loud: Auditing Short Links for Screen Readers and Plain English

Somewhere on a council website there is a line that reads: "For more information, click here." Behind it sits a shortened URL. A sighted mouse user gets on with their day. A screen reader user hears a string of letters and numbers announced one at a time, then has to decide whether that link opens a bin collection calendar or a PDF about parking permits.

That is the accessibility problem hiding inside link management, and it rarely shows up in campaign reports. Nobody's dashboard has a column for "people who gave up".

The bit nobody audits

Most link audits look at the destination: is it live, is it the right page, does it still resolve after the campaign ends. All worth doing. But the experience before the click matters just as much, and it is where short links are most likely to fall over.

A shortener compresses a URL. It does not compress meaning. If the slug is x7f2b, you have saved characters and spent comprehension.

Slugs are read aloud, so write them for ears

A human-readable slug is the single cheapest accessibility win available. Compare:

• cuturl.co.uk/x7f2b
• cuturl.co.uk/bin-day-2026

The first is a code. The second is a sentence fragment that a screen reader pronounces like words, that a person can read over the phone, and that survives being copied down from a printed leaflet.

A few rules worth putting in your campaign template:

• Four or five words, maximum. Long slugs get truncated in the address bar and in link previews.
• No ambiguous characters. Zero and letter O, one and lowercase L, letter I. If your slug needs a digit, check it doesn't sit next to a letter that looks like it.
• Hyphens, not underscores. Underscores can be announced as "underline", which is confusing and unnecessary.
• Avoid strings of numbers. 2026 is fine. 20261109 will be read as a very long number.
• Lowercase throughout. Case-sensitive redirects are a trap for anyone typing a link from memory.

Link text does the heavy lifting

WCAG 2.2 has two success criteria that between them cover most of this. 2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context) asks that the purpose of a link can be worked out from the link text, or from the text around it. 2.4.9 Link Purpose (Link Only) is stricter again and applies at AAA: the link text alone should tell you where you're going.

The practical version: never let "click here", "read more" or "find out more" be the only words carrying a link. Front-load the meaning instead.

• Not: To apply for a school place, click here.
• Better: Apply for a school place.
• Best: Apply for a school place (opens in a new tab).

Screen reader users often pull up a list of every link on a page — a single keystroke in most screen readers. If that list reads "click here, click here, read more, click here", the page has effectively no navigation. If it reads "Apply for a school place, Book a bulky waste collection, Check your council tax band", the page works.

One more thing: if your short link is printed on the page as visible text (which it usually is, for QR fallbacks), make sure it sits inside the anchor alongside any descriptive label — otherwise the descriptive text gets read out and the actual URL is skipped.

QR codes: an image with no alternative is a locked door

WCAG 1.1.1 Non-text Content is blunt about this. A QR code is an image. Images that carry information need a text alternative.

What good looks like on a bus stop poster or a leaflet:

• Alt text on the digital version of the poster: "QR code linking to recycling collection changes — the short link is printed underneath."
• The short URL in plain text next to the code, at a readable size, in high contrast. Not tucked into the design in 6pt grey.
• A description of the destination in ordinary words: "Scan to check your collection day."

It is also worth remembering who QR-only campaigns exclude: people on older handsets, people whose camera app is unreliable, people with a tremor or low vision who cannot frame the code steadily, and anyone standing on a windy platform. A QR code is a shortcut, not a sole route. Give people at least two ways in.

Practical QR checks: quiet zone around the code, dark-on-light rather than reversed out of a photo, at least 2cm square for close scanning, and test it on a cheap phone in poor light rather than on your own handset in a meeting room.

The spoken version

Radio, podcasts, tannoy announcements and phone-on-hold messages are the forgotten link channels. When someone has to say a URL out loud, the slug becomes the whole message.

A presenter will not read "cuturl.co.uk/x7f2b" correctly. They will read "cuturl dot co dot uk slash bin day" — so give them a slug that makes that possible. Avoid digits that sound like words, avoid homophones, and avoid anything that requires spelling out.

A useful test: read your slug to a colleague across a room and ask them to type it. If they can't, neither can a listener in a car.

Plain English is not dumbing down

The language around a link counts too. WCAG 3.1.5 Reading Level (AAA) suggests content should be understandable to someone with roughly nine years of schooling, and the government's own content guidance has been pushing the same direction for years: short sentences, everyday words, active voice.

In link terms that means the label and the landing page should agree. If the link says "Check your bin day" and lands on a page headed "Waste and recycling collection schedule enquiries", the user has a moment of doubt. Small, cumulative doubt is what makes people abandon a public service journey.

A ten-minute audit you can run today

1. Open your campaign page or poster PDF.
2. Tab through every link. Is each one reachable by keyboard, with a visible focus outline?
3. Switch on VoiceOver (Mac) or NVDA (Windows) and pull up the links list. Read it back. Does it make sense out of context?
4. Zoom to 200%. Does the short URL still sit next to its QR code, or has the layout thrown them apart?
5. Print the leaflet in greyscale. Is the code still scannable and the fallback URL still legible?
6. Read the slug out loud to someone who hasn't seen the campaign.

That's it. No licence required.

Who this actually applies to

Public sector bodies in the UK have been bound by the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations since 2018, which means WCAG 2.2 AA in practice, plus a published accessibility statement. Charities, housing associations, NHS trusts and anyone spending public money tend to be held to the same bar by funders and by their own reputations.

But this isn't only a compliance story. A short link is meant to be a courtesy — a tidy, memorable path to something useful. When it is spelled out letter by letter and leads nowhere describable, the courtesy disappears. Fix the slug, write the link text properly, give the QR code a text twin, and the same link works for everyone who meets it.

Read your links back to yourself. Then read them back to someone who can't see them.