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Double links (image being a spearate link, then link to product)

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From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Feb 3, 2013 3:59PM

Good morning/afternoon/evening yea wise people.
I have been conducting extensive testing of multiple websites for the
Icelandic Web Association awards. It's been a very interesting
experience, where one starts seeing emerging patterns, to which one
needs to find solutions.
I have one or two separate ones, but will perhaps post them later.
The one I am refering to is extremely common in online stores.
First we have a link to an image of the product (I guess it's a
clickable image), no alt text, no text inside the anchor tag usually,
screen reader reads the name of the graphics file, usually with the
words "graphic link", at least Jaws does.
Right after the link (in html source order) is the "link proper" to
the product/product description. That link is fully accessible, has
proper text inside etc.

I've seen this at
http://www.buy.com and www.newegg.com
I came across this pattern on the Icelandic website
http://www.eirberg.is (all in Icelandic, but you easily see the
pattern without understanding the text).
I am wondering what to advise the website developers/designers in this regard.
Is there any benefit from having a separate link to the image, rather
than putting the image with the src attribute, inside the anchor tag
for the product, thus using a single link.
From screen reading point of view that would make the ost sense.
If we keep a separate image-only link, should it be hidden with
aria-hidden, should it have proper alt text, in which case users get
the same link essentially twice for every product listed on the page,
or is there another solution that would work?
Any ideas/suggestions always more than welcome.
-B