Overview
Screen reader users frequently navigate web pages, using the TAB key on the keyboard, through actionable items such as links, buttons and form controls.
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Make sure that all links are provided at the point in the content at which they’re useful without visibibly displaying the URL or “here”.
Combining adjacent image and text links for the same resource.
Best Practice
Best practice is to provide descriptive actionable link text or button labels by default.
Avoid the use of single word links (“Here”, “More”, “Go”). Links should be clear, descriptive and able to stand on their own.
Good example: View all upcoming meetings
Bad example: View more
Good example: Start the process to apply for a marriage license.
Bad example: Click here to apply for a marriage license.
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Not accessible: Email Christina
Combining Adjacent Image and Text Links for the Same Resource
Provide both text and iconic representations of links without making the web page more confusing or difficult for keyboard users or assistive technology users. Since different users finding text and icons more usable, providing both can improve the accessibility of the link.
Many links have both a text and iconic representation adjacent to each other, but rendered in separate a elements. Visually they appear to be a single link, but many users encounter them as adjacent identical links. For a keyboard user, it is tedious to navigate through redundant links. For users of assistive technologies, it can be confusing to encounter successive identical links. When the text alternative for the icon is a duplicate of the link text, it is repetitive as screen readers read the description twice.
This technique provides such links by putting the text and image together in one a element and providing null alternative text on the image to eliminate duplication of text. In this way, both representations of the link are provided, but keyboard users only encounter one link and assistive technology that provides users with link lists for a web page do not include duplicate links.
Sometimes the text and the icon link are rendered in separate, adjacent table cells to facilitate page layout. Although WCAG 2 does not prohibit the use of layout tables, CSS-based layouts are recommended in order to retain the defined semantic meaning of the HTML table elements and to conform to the coding practice of separating presentation from content. If CSS is used, this technique can be applied to combine the links.
Example 1
The icon and text are contained in the same a element.
<a href="products.html">
<img src="icon.gif" alt="">
Products page
</a>
Example 2
A link contains an icon and text, and the site help refers to the icon. The img has a text alternative which is the name used for the icon in the site help, which describes clicking the home page icon.
<a href="home.html">
<img src="house.gif" alt="home page icon">
Go to the home page
</a>
WCAG Related References
2.4.4 Link Purpose - In Context (Level A)
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