Our community | Eastleigh Borough Council

Eastleigh Borough Council | Planning and building

General Public Information | Eastleigh Borough Council

Council | Eastleigh Borough Council

Business Support and Information | Eastleigh Borough Council

First time visit: View without clicking anything

Council Tax | Eastleigh Borough Council

Environmental Health | Eastleigh Borough Council

Eastleigh Borough Council

Births, deaths and ceremonies | Eastleigh Borough Council

Two adjacent links should not point to the same destination. You almost always want to combine the 
two links.

For example, it is quite common to link an image and text together like this:

```html
<a href="news.html">
    <img src="photo.jpg" alt="" />
</a>
<a href="news.html">
    News
</a>
``` 

These adjacent links should be combined like so:

```html
<a href="news.html">
    <img src="photo.jpg" alt="" />
    News
</a>
``` 

Links to `#` are ignored, as these are nearly always placeholders for JavaScript, e.g.:

```html
<a href="#" onclick="approve()">
    OK
</a>
<a href="#" onclick="reject()">
    Cancel
</a>
```

# Justification

Many users of assistive technology are only able to experience content sequentially - that is, they must
step through each part of the page, one part at a time. Often this is a slow process, potentially 
hampered by a physical impediment.

Stepping through redundant links is time consuming; for example users of a screen reader must 
hear each link read aloud in turn. 

This also simplifies your code. 

# Methodology

1. Find all links (`<a>` tags) on the page.
2. Ignore links pointing to `#`, as these are usually placeholders for JavaScript.
3. Flag links which are (a) separated only by whitespace and (b) which point to the 
   same absolute URL.  

# Learn more

Read about [Technique H2](https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/H2) on how to combine
an adjacent image and texts links.

duplicate-adjacent-link

October 2025

September 2025

	Title / URL	Issues
	Our community \| Eastleigh Borough Councilwww.eastleigh.gov.uk/our-community	22
	Eastleigh Borough Council \| Planning and buildingwww.eastleigh.gov.uk/planning-and-building	14
	General Public Information \| Eastleigh Borough Councilwww.eastleigh.gov.uk/council/general-public-information	12
	Council \| Eastleigh Borough Councilwww.eastleigh.gov.uk/council	12
	Business Support and Information \| Eastleigh Borough Councilwww.eastleigh.gov.uk/business	11
	First time visit: View without clicking anythingwww.eastleigh.gov.uk/	10
	Council Tax \| Eastleigh Borough Councilwww.eastleigh.gov.uk/council-tax	10
	Environmental Health \| Eastleigh Borough Councilwww.eastleigh.gov.uk/environment/environmental-health	10
	Eastleigh Borough Councilwww.eastleigh.gov.uk/	10
	Births, deaths and ceremonies \| Eastleigh Borough Councilwww.eastleigh.gov.uk/our-community/births-deaths-and-ceremonies	9

Combine adjacent links with the same destination

Eastleigh Borough Council

Where this issue has occurred