WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: empty anchor tags

for

From: Jason Megginson
Date: Feb 24, 2012 11:36AM

Exactly. Another problem to note with this implementation is that if a
user disables colors via the browser's accessibility settings (IE and FF),
the CSS background images will not be visible to the user virtually
removing the anchors from view.

Jason Megginson
SSB BART Group
703-637-8964 (o)
703-244-7755 (c)


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Tony Olivero
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2012 4:47 PM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] empty anchor tags

It may also be that these links are used to trigger JavaScript functions.
I have seen cases of background CSS being used to display an image, and an
empty anchor is in the actual HTML code to trigger the function.

As Jared stated, these empty anchors should be removed, but if it is the
case that they are being used to trigger JS calls, you will need to ensure
an accessible replacement in the page content.

Tony

-----Original Message-----
From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2012 15:42
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] empty anchor tags

Hi Angela

Out of curiosity, what do you use the empty anchor tags for on the
website?
May be, if they are purely visual in nature and unnecessary for screen
reader users you could hide them with aria-hidden (see John Foliet's
blogpost from a few days back).
Though it could be argued that hiding website elements from a user group
is a slippery slope of dealing with accessibility issues.


On 2/23/12, Jared Smith < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Empty links will usually show up in the links list and will be
> navigable by the keyboard, but nothing will be visible or read by a
> screen reader (most simply read "link") when they are navigated to.
> Empty links should most certainly be removed.
>
> Jared
>