Success Criterion 2.4.4
Conformance level A

Icon-Only Link With No Accessible Name at All

2.4.4 — Link Purpose (In Context)

Scenario

Setting

A photo-sharing app's upload screen

What’s wrong

Icon links (social, edit, delete) with no accessible name, or name = "icon"/"link".

Example

<a href="/report.pdf">Click here</a>

Why it matters

People who browse by links list or voice commands and need unambiguous link purposes.

How to test

Pull up a screen reader's link list: icon-only links (social, edit, delete) with no accessible name, or a name like 'icon'/'link', fail.

How to fix

The link's purpose must be clear from its accessible name (or name plus immediate programmatic context), and unique among links going to different destinations.

<a href="/report.pdf">Download the Q3 financial report (PDF)</a>

Link text needs to describe its destination on its own, without relying on surrounding sentence context.

Outcome

On a photo-sharing app's upload screen, this barrier is gone for people who browse by links list or voice commands and need unambiguous link purposes — they get the same result as anyone else here.

Who is affected