Council and Democracy

Resources

Find out about which bin to use for items of waste

Start Well: Start Well: Information on the Holiday Activity and Food Provision

What you can put in your black, blue and green bin?

Browse: Department and Chief Executive information

Armed Forces Covenant

Report your transport issues

Joint Strategic Needs Assessment: Main causes of death

Page not found

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

December 2025

November 2025

Halton Borough Council

	Title / URL	Issues
	Council and Democracywww3.halton.gov.uk/Pages/councildemocracy/Council.aspx	2
	Resourceswww3.halton.gov.uk/Pages/health/hit/start/swresources.aspx	2
	Find out about which bin to use for items of wastewww3.halton.gov.uk/Pages/Bins/wheeliebinguide.aspx	1
	Start Well: Start Well: Information on the Holiday Activity and Food Provisionwww3.halton.gov.uk/Pages/health/hit/start/haf.aspx	1
	What you can put in your black, blue and green bin?www3.halton.gov.uk/Pages/Bins/WhichBin.aspx	1
	Browse: Department and Chief Executive informationwww3.halton.gov.uk/Pages/councildemocracy/Departments.aspx	1
	Armed Forces Covenantwww3.halton.gov.uk/Pages/councildemocracy/armedforces.aspx	1
	Report your transport issueswww3.halton.gov.uk/Pages/traffic/Report-it.aspx	1
	Joint Strategic Needs Assessment: Main causes of deathwww3.halton.gov.uk/Pages/health/topics/maincausesdeath.aspx	1
	Page not foundwww3.halton.gov.uk/Pages/PageNotFoundError.aspx?requestUrl=https://www3.halton.gov.uk/invented-url-for-404-page	1

Combine adjacent links with the same destination

Halton Borough Council

Where this issue has occurred