Read Your Links the Way a Screen Reader Does

Screen reader users often pull up a list of every link on a page and read it on its own, with none of the sentence around it. Twelve links all reading “read more” are twelve identical choices.

Read this list as 2.4.9 at Level AAA, which is the rule that removes the surrounding context. At Level A, 2.4.4 lets the enclosing list item, paragraph, card or table cell supply the purpose, so twelve “read more” links each sitting in their own card conform. The list below shows what your readers hear rather than what fails an audit.

What it checks

Text that says nothing alone
Read more, click here, this, details. Fine in a sentence, useless in a list.
Links with no text at all
Usually an icon or image link where the alt text was left empty.
Raw addresses as link text
A screen reader reads the whole thing aloud, sometimes character by character.
Same words, different destinations
Two links worded identically that go to different places cannot be told apart. W3C calls this best practice at 2.4.4 and requires it at 2.4.9, which is Level AAA.
New windows opening unannounced
A target of _blank with nothing in the text warning the reader. W3C's G201 is advisory for every criterion it touches and sufficient for none, so this is a courtesy rather than a failure.
Whole sentences wrapped in a link
Almost always a mistake in the markup rather than a decision.

What it cannot tell you

Whether a link is honest. “Download the 2026 pricing guide” passes every check here and still fails the reader if it opens something else. Judging that needs a person.

It reads the HTML the page returns, so anything a script adds afterwards is invisible to it. And it looks at one page. Link problems tend to live in templates, so a fault here usually repeats across the whole site, which is what a free ten-page scan is for.

How to write the replacement

Say where the link goes, in as few words as carry the meaning. The test is to read it aloud with your eyes off the screen. If you cannot tell where it leads, neither can anybody else.

Before
Read more
After
Read the 2026 accessibility law deadlines
Before
Click here to see our pricing
After
See our pricing
Before
https://example.com/reports/annual-2026.pdf
After
The 2026 annual report (PDF, 2.4 MB)
Before
Learn more
After
Learn how the three-pass audit works

The rule an audit measures you against is 2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context), and it accepts programmatically determined context. The stricter version this tool actually models, which removes that allowance, is 2.4.9 Link Purpose (Link Only), and the editorial habits that prevent all of this sit in the content editor’s checklist.