Links without an accessible name.

What fails — and who it fails

The failure, in plain language.

Icon links (cart, account, social), image links with empty alt, and JavaScript anchors with no text. Screen-reader users navigate by link lists; nameless links make that list useless.

Detection — what the machine can and cannot judge

How the scanner finds it.

• Every <a href> is checked for an accessible name from its content, alt text, aria-label or aria-labelledby.
• What automation cannot judge: whether "read more" makes sense out of context — link purpose quality is a human check.

The legal reading — factual, not fearful

Where this sits in enforcement.

Level A and instantly demonstrable in any assessor screencast: tab to the link, hear "link". Navigation-blocking failures rank high in guided audits because they gate every task behind them.

The fix — by pattern

2 patterns cover nearly every instance.

Fix the template, not the page — one change typically clears every instance at once. The triage engine groups findings by template pattern for exactly that reason.

Verification — resolution is evidence, not a checkbox

Fixed means a scan said so.

On monitored domains, mark the finding fixed and the next scan verifies it: zero remaining instances converts the finding to Resolved, and both the claim and the confirmation land in the append-only ledger. Criteria that need human judgement close through sign-off in the coverage matrix — covered by the right method, never by assumption.

Related failures: