Board of Trustees | SUNY Erie Community College

Student Life at SUNY Erie Community College | Buffalo NY

Join Our Mailing List

About SUNY Erie (ECC) | SUNY Erie Community College

Emotional Health Support | Erie Connect | SUNY Erie

SUNY Erie Community College State University of New York

ECC English as an Additional Language (ESL) Department

Graduation | SUNY Erie Community College | Buffalo, NY

Links must be defined in a specific way to be accessed by screen readers, which are used by 
blind and the partially-sighted.

To work with accessibility technologies, links must contain both machine-readable text, and 
a `href` attribute. If a link is not actually
pointing to a page or part of a page, it should be replaced with another semantic element, such
as a `button`, or the `<a>` tag should have a role of `button`. 

For example:

```html
<a href="/about">About us</a>
```

If the link contains _nothing but an image_, that image should specify alternative text, e.g.

```html
<a href="/apple">
    <img src="apple.png" alt="Apple">
</a>
```

Before HTML5, an anchor was often used to create a target to link to, e.g.

```html
<a name="example"></a>
```

This is not supported in HTML5, and the use of anchors for targets is discouraged. Use an `id`
attribute on a non-anchor tag instead, e.g.

```html
<div id="example"> ... </div>
```

Empty links (e.g. `<a></a>`) are often incorrectly used for buttons or controls in a
JavaScript application. In these cases, you should usually define the link as having a more appropriate
role, e.g. as a button. To do this, use the `role` attribute (e.g `<a role="button">`), or replace 
the `<a>` tag with a more appropriate tag, such as `<button>`.

For more details, see [Technique H91](https://www.w3.org/TR/2016/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20161007/H91)
and learn about [ARIA roles](https://www.sitepoint.com/how-to-use-aria-effectively-with-html5/).

bad-anchor

October 2025

September 2025

Erie Community College State University of New York

	Title / URL	Issues
	Board of Trustees \| SUNY Erie Community Collegewww.ecc.edu/about/administration/	2
	Student Life at SUNY Erie Community College \| Buffalo NYwww.ecc.edu/student-life/	2
	Join Our Mailing Listwww.ecc.edu/get-info/index.html	2
	About SUNY Erie (ECC) \| SUNY Erie Community Collegewww.ecc.edu/about/	2
	Emotional Health Support \| Erie Connect \| SUNY Eriewww.ecc.edu/erieconnects/	2
	A-Zwww.ecc.edu/invented-url-for-404-page	2
	SUNY Erie Community College State University of New Yorkwww.ecc.edu/	2
	Student Life at SUNY Erie Community College \| Buffalo NYwww.ecc.edu/student-life/student-life.html	2
	ECC English as an Additional Language (ESL) Departmentwww.ecc.edu/academics/eal.html	2
	Graduation \| SUNY Erie Community College \| Buffalo, NYwww.ecc.edu/graduate/index.html	2

Ensure links can be used by screen readers

Erie Community College State University of New York

Where this issue has occurred