Hyperlinks or simply links are the elements on the website that connect one page to another. These links also connect one website to another or simply allow the user to jump from one portion of the page to another portion of the same page.
Points to remember
- Links must have a description that informs the user about the target.
- Link description such as Click here, read more etc can be used as long as their contextual text is in the immediate surrounding. Howerver, click here about something, read more about something is a best practice.
- If the link is associated with an image and the image has an alternate text, link description is not required. If a link text is provided it should be repeated information from alternate text. Eg: For auto biography of George Bush, the alternate text for the image can be George Bush and the link text can be auto biography. This will be read out as “Link Graphic George Bush auto biograph6”. If the word George Bush is again repeated in the link text screen reader will read it as “Link Graphic George Bush George Bush Auto biography” which is redundant information.
- Use the title attribute within the link wisely. Do not repeat the link description again in the title text.
Validation for links
- Open the page on the browser.
- Run an automation tool such as aXe and check for violations that says Links does not have desernable link text.
- In most cases all the defects thrown by aXe are failures.
- If aXe does not violate any such defects then do the following check,
Validation for links using Screen reader
- After checking with aXe navigate the page using NVDA. Tab to each link and check if the link description is clear.
- If the link description is not clear within the context i.e. link text with it’s surrounding text i.e. paragraph, table headers, headings etc then it is an accessibility violation.
WCAG Success criteria
2.4.4 Link purpose (in context) (`Level AA)