Skip to content
WCAG 2 Test Rules

For developers of evaluation tools and test methodologies

About WCAG 2 Test Rules

Proposed Link is descriptive

Description

This rule checks that the accessible name of a link describes its purpose.

Applicability

This rule applies to any inheriting semantic link for which all the following is true:

Expectation

Each test target has an accessible name which describes its purpose.

Assumptions

Accessibility Support

Background

Bibliography

Accessibility Requirements Mapping

Input Aspects

The following aspects are required in using this rule.

Test Cases

Passed

Passed Example 1

Open in a new tab

This a element has an accessible name from its text that describes its purpose.

<a href="#desc">See the description of this product.</a>

<p id="desc">This product consists of several web pages.</p>

Passed Example 2

Open in a new tab

This a element has an accessible name from the alt attribute on its img element that describes its purpose.

<a href="#main"><img src="/test-assets/5effbb/main.png" alt="Go to the main content"/></a>

<main>
	<p id="main">This is the main content.</p>
</main>

Passed Example 3

Open in a new tab

This span element has an explicit role of link and an accessible name from its text that describes its purpose.

<span role="link" tabindex="0" onclick="document.location+='#desc'">See description of the product.</span>

<p id="desc">This product consists of several web pages.</p>

Passed Example 4

Open in a new tab

This a element has an accessible name from its aria-labelledby attribute that describes its purpose.

<p id="instructions">Go to the main content.</p>
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" x="0" y="0">
	<a href="#main" aria-labelledby="instructions">
		<path
			style="fill:#1E201D;"
			d="M21.205,5.007c-0.429-0.444-1.143-0.444-1.587,0c-0.429,0.429-0.429,1.143,0,1.571l8.047,8.047H1.111
			C0.492,14.626,0,15.118,0,15.737c0,0.619,0.492,1.127,1.111,1.127h26.554l-8.047,8.032c-0.429,0.444-0.429,1.159,0,1.587
			c0.444,0.444,1.159,0.444,1.587,0l9.952-9.952c0.444-0.429,0.444-1.143,0-1.571L21.205,5.007z"
		/>
	</a>
</svg>

<main>
	<p id="main">This is the main content.</p>
</main>

Failed

Failed Example 1

Open in a new tab

This link has an accessible name which does not describe its purpose.

<a href="#desc">More</a>

<p id="desc">This product consists of several web pages.</p>

Failed Example 2

Open in a new tab

This link has an accessible name which does not describe its purpose.

<div role="link" tabindex="0" onclick="document.location+='#main'">More</div>

<main>
	<p id="main">This is the main content.</p>
</main>

Failed Example 3

Open in a new tab

This link has an accessible name which does not describe its purpose.

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" x="0" y="0">
	<a href="#main">
		<text x="20" y="20">
			Go
		</text>
	</a>
</svg>

<main>
	<p id="main">This is the main content.</p>
</main>

Failed Example 4

Open in a new tab

This link has an accessible name which, alone, does not describe its purpose.

<p>See the description of <a href="#desc">this product</a>.</p>

<p id="desc">This product consists of several web pages.</p>

Failed Example 5

Open in a new tab

These links have accessible names which, alone, do not describe their purpose.

<ul>
	<li>
		Ulysses
		<ul>
			<li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4300/4300-h/4300-h.htm"> HTML </a></li>
			<li>
				<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4300.epub.images?session_id=04cd710372888de8d8d322215cdfe8ce5b0f8d73">
					EPUB
				</a>
			</li>
			<li><a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4300/4300-0.txt"> Plain text </a></li>
		</ul>
	</li>
</ul>

Inapplicable

Inapplicable Example 1

Open in a new tab

There is no inheriting semantic link in this document.

<a href="https://www.w3.org/WAI" role="button">Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)</a>

Inapplicable Example 2

Open in a new tab

This link is not included in the accessibility tree.

<a href="https://www.w3.org/WAI" style="display: none;"
	><img src="/test-assets/5effbb/cart.svg" alt="Checkout" />Checkout</a
>

Inapplicable Example 3

Open in a new tab

There is no inheriting semantic link in this document (a element without an href attribute do not have a role of link).

<a>placeholder</a>

Glossary

Accessible Name

The accessible name is the programmatically determined name of a user interface element that is included in the accessibility tree.

The accessible name is calculated using the accessible name and description computation.

For native markup languages, such as HTML and SVG, additional information on how to calculate the accessible name can be found in HTML Accessibility API Mappings 1.0, Accessible Name and Description Computation (working draft) and SVG Accessibility API Mappings, Name and Description (working draft).

For more details, see examples of accessible name.

Note: As per the accessible name and description computation, each element always has an accessible name. When no accessible name is provided, the element will nonetheless be assigned an empty ("") one.

Note: As per the accessible name and description computation, accessible names are flat string trimmed of leading and trailing whitespace. Notably, it is not possible for a non-empty accessible name to be composed only of whitespace since these must be trimmed.

Explicit Semantic Role

The explicit semantic role of an element is determined by its role attribute (if any).

The role attribute takes a list of tokens. The explicit semantic role is the first valid role in this list. The valid roles are all non-abstract roles from WAI-ARIA Specifications. If the element has no role attribute, or if it has one with no valid role, then this element has no explicit semantic role.

Other roles may be added as they become available. Not all roles will be supported in all assistive technologies. Testers are encouraged to adjust which roles are allowed according to the accessibility support base line. For the purposes of executing test cases in all rules, it should be assumed that all roles are supported by assistive technologies so that none of the roles fail due to lack of accessibility support.

Focusable

An element is focusable if one or both of the following are true:

Exception: Elements that lose focus during a period of up to 1 second after gaining focus, without the user interacting with the page the element is on, are not considered focusable.

Notes:

Implicit Semantic Role

The implicit semantic role of an element is a pre-defined value given by the host language which depends on the element and its ancestors.

Implicit roles for HTML and SVG, are documented in the HTML accessibility API mappings (working draft) and the SVG accessibility API mappings (working draft).

Included in the accessibility tree

Elements included in the accessibility tree of platform specific accessibility APIs are exposed to assistive technologies. This allows users of assistive technology to access the elements in a way that meets the requirements of the individual user.

The general rules for when elements are included in the accessibility tree are defined in the core accessibility API mappings. For native markup languages, such as HTML and SVG, additional rules for when elements are included in the accessibility tree can be found in the HTML accessibility API mappings (working draft) and the SVG accessibility API mappings (working draft).

For more details, see examples of included in the accessibility tree.

Programmatically hidden elements are removed from the accessibility tree. However, some browsers will leave focusable elements with an aria-hidden attribute set to true in the accessibility tree. Because they are hidden, these elements are considered not included in the accessibility tree. This may cause confusion for users of assistive technologies because they may still be able to interact with these focusable elements using sequential keyboard navigation, even though the element should not be included in the accessibility tree.

Inheriting Semantic Role

An element with an inheriting semantic role of X is any element with a non-abstract semantic role that inherits from X, or is the same as X.

Example: An “inheriting semantic link” is any element that either has the semantic role of link or a semantic role that inherits from the link role, such as doc-biblioref.

Marked as decorative

An element is marked as decorative if one or more of the following conditions is true:

Elements are marked as decorative as a way to convey the intention of the author that they are pure decoration. It is different from the element actually being pure decoration as authors may make mistakes. It is different from the element being effectively ignored by assistive technologies as rules such as presentational roles conflict resolution may overwrite this intention.

Elements can also be ignored by assistive technologies if they are programmatically hidden. This is different from marking the element as decorative and does not convey the same intention. Notably, being programmatically hidden may change as users interact with the page (showing and hiding elements) while being marked as decorative should stay the same through all states of the page.

Outcome

An outcome is a conclusion that comes from evaluating an ACT Rule on a test subject or one of its constituent test target. An outcome can be one of the three following types:

Note: A rule has one passed or failed outcome for every test target. When there are no test targets the rule has one inapplicable outcome. This means that each test subject will have one or more outcomes.

Note: Implementations using the EARL10-Schema can express the outcome with the outcome property. In addition to passed, failed and inapplicable, EARL 1.0 also defined an incomplete outcome. While this cannot be the outcome of an ACT Rule when applied in its entirety, it often happens that rules are only partially evaluated. For example, when applicability was automated, but the expectations have to be evaluated manually. Such “interim” results can be expressed with the incomplete outcome.

Programmatically Hidden

An HTML element is programmatically hidden if either it has a computed CSS property visibility whose value is not visible; or at least one of the following is true for any of its inclusive ancestors in the flat tree:

Note: Contrarily to the other conditions, the visibility CSS property may be reverted by descendants.

Note: The HTML standard suggests rendering elements with the hidden attribute with a CSS rule that applies the value none to the CSS property display of the element. Although the suggestion is not normative, known user agents render it according to the suggestion (unless the content specifies another CSS rule that sets the value of the display property). If a user agent does not follow the suggestion, this definition may produce incorrect results for this user agent.

Semantic Role

The semantic role of an element is determined by the first of these cases that applies:

  1. Conflict If the element is marked as decorative, but the element is included in the accessibility tree; or would be included in the accessibility tree when it is not programmatically hidden, then its semantic role is its implicit role.
  2. Explicit If the element has an explicit role, then its semantic role is its explicit role.
  3. Implicit The semantic role of the element is its implicit role.

This definition can be used in expressions such as “semantic button” meaning any element with a semantic role of button.

WAI-ARIA specifications

The WAI ARIA Specifications group both the WAI ARIA W3C Recommendation and ARIA modules, namely:

Note: depending on the type of content being evaluated, part of the specifications might be irrelevant and should be ignored.

Implementations

There are currently no known implementations for this rule. If you would like to contribute an implementation, please read the ACT Implementations page for details.

Changelog

This is the first version of this ACT rule.

Back to Top

This is an unpublished draft preview that might include content that is not yet approved. The published website is at w3.org/WAI/.