Business rules manual
RGAA v4.1.2
Theme 6: Links
Rule 6.2.1

Rule 6.2.1

Summary

This test consists in checking that there are no empty links in the page

Business description

Criterion

6.2

Test

6.2.1

Description

Dans chaque page web, chaque lien a-t-il un intitulé entre <a> et </a> ?

Notes techniques (6.2)

Une ancre n’est pas un lien même si pendant longtemps l’élément <a> a servi de support à cette technique. Elle n’est donc pas concernée par le présent critère.

Level

A

Technical description

Scope

Page

Decision level

Decidable

Algorithm

Selection

Set1

All <a> tags with a "href" attribute that have neither an "aria-label" attribute nor an "aria-labelledby" attribute. All the tags with a "role" attribute equals to “link” that have neither an "aria-label" attribute nor an "aria-labelledby" attribute.

Process

Test1

For each element of Set1, we compute the link text using LinkTextElementBuilder, which:

  1. Recursively traverses the children of the link element
  2. For text nodes: extracts the text content
  3. For image elements (<img>, <svg>, <object>, <embed>, <input type="image">, <area>, and elements with role="img"): delegates to AccessibleNameElementBuilder to compute the accessible name following the RGAA priority order:
    • aria-labelledby attribute (resolved via DOM lookup)
    • aria-label attribute
    • alt attribute (for <img>, <area>, <input type="image">)
    • <title> child element (for <svg>)
    • title attribute (for <img>, <input type="image">, <object>, <embed>)
    • Fallback text content (for <canvas>, <object>)
  4. For other elements: recursion continues into child nodes

We then check whether the computed link text is not empty.

For each element returning true in Test1, raise a MessageA

MessageA : Empty Link
  • code : EmptyLink
  • status: Failed
  • parameter : computed accessible name, "title" attribute, snippet
  • present in source : yes

Analysis

Not Applicable

The page has no link (Set1 is empty)

Passed

All the links of the page have not empty textual content (Test1 returns false for all the elements of Set1)

Failed

At least one link has an empty textual content (Test1 returns true for at least one element of Set1)

Notes

We exclude tags with an aria-label attribute or an aria-labelledby attribute as we consider that these tags have an accessible name.

For this test, the "title" attribute on the link element itself is not taken into account to compute the textual content of the link. It ensures empty links only with a "title" attribute are seen as failed.

Image elements inside links are handled by delegating to AccessibleNameElementBuilder, which follows the RGAA accessible name computation order. This ensures that SVG images with aria-label, images with aria-labelledby referencing external text, and other image types are properly accounted for when determining whether a link has non-empty text.

Files

Rule 6.1.5