Link purpose
Silktide tests that the text of each link explains where the link goes. Links that read "click here" or "learn more", or that contain only symbols, give no clue about their destination.
<!-- Generic: tells the user nothing -->
<a href="/accessibility-guide">Click here</a>
<!-- Fixed: the destination is clear from the text alone -->
<a href="/accessibility-guide">Read our accessibility guide</a>
Why this matters
People using a often pull up a list of every link on the page and navigate from it, hearing each link's text out of context. A list of "learn more", "read more", and "click here" is useless: each entry must be visited to find out where it goes. Screen readers also announce the word "link" before the text, so "click here" becomes "link click here" - noise with no information.
Descriptive links help everyone else too: sighted visitors scan pages by their links, and search engines use link text to understand the destination.
How to fix it
- Rewrite generic link text so the destination is clear from the words alone: "learn more" becomes "learn more about accessibility guidelines".
- Replace symbol-only links such as an arrow or emoji with readable text, or add if the link contains only an image.
- Do not say "link" in the link text - screen readers already announce that, so "link to pricing" is heard as "link link to pricing".
- If a flagged link is genuinely clear in your context, you can it.
How Silktide tests this
- Find every link (
<a>and<area>elements with a destination) that is exposed to screen readers - links hidden from them are skipped. - Work out each link's text as would read it, including image alt text and text added by CSS.
- Flag links whose text contains no readable characters (no letters or numbers), such as a bare symbol or emoji.
- Flag links whose text matches a known list of generic phrases such as "click here", "read more", and "learn more", in multiple languages.
Links with no text at all are reported separately by the Empty link check.