Goal
- Allow users in environments where images are not seen (text browsers, screen readers or browsers with the images disabled) to understand the meaning of the links attached to images that they cannot see.
- Enable bots to exploit the information carried by the image links (to reference, index and perform machine translation on the image text alternatives).
- Enable the display of relevant text while images are loading.
- Improve the accessibility of content for people with disabilities.
- Improve the way content is taken into account by search engines and indexing tools.
Implementation
Link images are easy to identify (they are the only content placed between <a> and </a> tags). However, you must also think about the links generated with JavaScript to other elements.
In general, you must:
- give each img element in question an alt attribute indicating the target or the role of the link;
- give each area element in question an alt attribute indicating the target or role of the link;
- indicate the target or role of the link in the content of each object element in question;
- indicate the target or role of the link in the content of each canvas element in question.
Control
- Check that the alt attribute of each img element in question indicates the target or role of the link
- Check that the alt attribute of each area element in question indicates the target or role of the link
- Check that the content of each object element in question indicates the target or role of the link.
- Check that the content of each canvas element in question indicates the target or role of the link.
- Check the wording of any other element having the role of a link.
Discover Opquast training and certification
The objective of these rules and the Opquast community mission is ‘making the web better’ for your customers and for everyone! Opquast rules cover the key major areas of risk that can negatively affect website users such as privacy, ecodesign, accessibility and security.
Opquast training has already allowed over 19,000 web professionals to have their skills certified. Train your teams, contact us
We offer a 1 hour free discovery module.