Stop writing "click here" and "read more" links
A link that says click here, or more, or continue, tells you nothing at all once you meet it on its own. F84 is the failure technique for that, so a match is a defect rather than a house style. Read the filing before you size the work, because it changes what you owe. W3C files F84 under the rule about link text read alone, which is Level AAA. The Level A rule lets the surrounding sentence rescue the link, so click here inside a sentence that names the destination passes there and fails here. The other half of the failure is a mechanism. Where a page offers a way to expand every vague link into a descriptive one, the failure does not stand, which is a route almost no site takes and almost every site could.
How we find it in an audit
Automation lists every link on the audited pages and flags the stock stubs, duplicates included, because five Read more links pointing five different places is the shape this usually takes. A reviewer then tests each one against the escape route the Level A rule allows, which is whether the same sentence, list item or table cell genuinely names the destination. We read the links the way a screen reader does as well, out of context and gathered into a list, since that is the view the whole finding rests on.
How affected users experience it
Screen-reader users pull up a list of a page's links to move quickly, and get click here, click here, more, more, more. A row of identical doors. Tabbing is worse in one respect, because the links arrive one at a time with the same word each time and there is no list to compare them in, so there is nothing to hold on to. Sighted readers take the destination out of the sentence around the link without noticing they did it. That free absorption is exactly what both of these views strip away.
Passes vs. fails
Passes
<p>Our returns policy changed. <a href="/returns">Read the updated returns policy</a>.</p>Fails
<p>Our returns policy changed. <a href="/returns">Click here</a>.</p>How this gets tested
The W3C publishes test rules that define what a checker looks for here.
- Link has non-empty accessible nameA tool can check this
- Link in context is descriptiveA tool can check this
- Links with identical accessible names and same context serve equivalent purposeA tool finds candidates, you decide
- Link is descriptiveA tool can check this
- Links with identical accessible names have equivalent purposeA tool can check this
The other techniques filed under this rule
15 guides on this site are filed under 2.4.9 Link Purpose (Link Only). W3C documents this one as a failure of that rule, so it describes a way the rule gets broken rather than a way to pass it.
- ARIA8sufficientFix vague link text with aria-label
- C7sufficientAdd hidden text to clarify short links
- G91sufficientWrite link text that states its purpose
- G189sufficientOffer a switch to self-describing link text
- H24sufficientAdd alt text to every image map area
- H30sufficientWrite link text that says where the link goes
This guide is our interpretation of W3C technique F84: Failure of Success Criterion 2.4.9 due to using a non-specific link such as "click here" or "more" without a mechanism to change the link text to specific text.. W3C publishes its techniques as guidance rather than as the standard, and says so on every one of them. The success criterion is what conformance is measured against, and a technique is one documented way to meet it.