This text is only here for demo purposes. Read the related blog entry for more information.
If they don't, then they should. It's far to easy to create links labelled "click here" or "read more" but these are next to useless when not supported by the context of their surrounding text. Imagine how you'd decide which of these links to visit if they were displayed listed as a simple list of links. An unrealistic situation you might say, but you'd be wrong - this is exactly the situation faced by blind and partially sighted users every day. Popular screen reader software like JAWS and Window Eyes provide mechanisms for browsing through all links found in a page, the aim being to allow users to more quickly find the information they're after. Similar mechanisms exist for headings and other page elements but these are next to useless if you haven't labelled things correctly. Some argue that one can expand the meaning of a link through it's title attribute but this unfortunately proves to be a bit hit and miss - many screen readers don't read text in title attributes by default.
To add more salt to the wound let's turn to search engine crawlers. These place high importance on the text you assign to links so you're missing a trick if you continue to mislabel links in this way. Ever wanted to know the biggest culprits of the "click here" link? Simply search for this text in Google.
In my own posts I try reasonably hard to ensure links make sense out of context but sometimes I slip up. I can think of several instances of really poorly labelled links in previous posts and I really need to go back and correct them. In an attempt to highlight these failings going forward and because it seems like a useful additional navigation aid I've developed a simple script which extracts all links from a post and adds them to a new section in the side bar on the fly.
If you're new to the way screen readers work I'd highly recommend heading over to the YUI Blog and watching Yahoo!'s Accesibility Project Manager demonstrate how they're used.
A demo version of JAWS is available which can be used for up to 1/2 hour at a time. After this you'll have to reboot your computer before continuing to use it.