Give links context from their enclosing paragraph
The sentence around a link can carry the link's purpose, and W3C lists that as sufficient for 2.4.4 Link Purpose in Context. The condition has the same shape as H77's. The paragraph has to be the nearest block-level ancestor of the link, so context sitting in a heading two blocks up does not count here. That case is H80, which W3C files as advisory rather than sufficient, so the fallback is weaker than the thing it falls back from. Put the identifying words before the link. Somebody moving forward through the page needs to know what the report is before they are asked whether to read it.
How we find it in an audit
Judging whether prose resolves a link is human work, so we isolate each vague link and read only the paragraph it sits in. If we still cannot say where it goes, it fails. Pages carrying several Read more links get checked one at a time, because every paragraph has to do its own job.
How affected users experience it
In reading order the sentence and the link arrive together and the meaning lands. In a links list the paragraph is gone. Three links reading Read the full report, from three different paragraphs, become three identical entries with nothing to tell them apart. The technique passes the rule. It still slows down the fastest way anybody reads your page.
Passes vs. fails
Passes
<p>Our March outage post-mortem is now public. <a href="/news/412">Read the outage post-mortem</a>.</p>Fails
<p>Read more <a href="/news/412">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
Other ways to satisfy this rule
22 guides on this site are filed under 2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context). W3C lists this one as sufficient for that rule when used for identifying the purpose of a link using link text combined with programmatically determined link context, so the condition is part of the test rather than a footnote to it.
- ARIA7sufficientBuild clear link names from nearby headings
- ARIA8sufficientFix vague link text with aria-label
- C7sufficientAdd hidden text to clarify short links
- G53sufficientLet the sentence around a link explain it
- G91sufficientWrite link text that states its purpose
- G189sufficientOffer a switch to self-describing link text
This guide is our interpretation of W3C technique H78: Identifying the purpose of a link using link text combined with its enclosing paragraph. 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.