Gaming and mental health | Mental Health Foundation

Healthy social media report | Mental Health Foundation

Research | Mental Health Foundation

Programmes | Mental Health Foundation

Barnardo’s | Mental Health Foundation

OPEN - Our Personal Experience Network | Mental Health Foundation

Refugee programmes | Mental Health Foundation

Our work | Mental Health Foundation

About us | Mental Health Foundation

Mental Health Foundation | Everyone deserves good mental health

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

August 2025

July 2025

Mental Health Foundation

Title / URL	Issues
Gaming and mental health \| Mental Health Foundationwww.mentalhealth.org.uk/our-work/research/gaming-and-mental-health	54
Healthy social media report \| Mental Health Foundationwww.mentalhealth.org.uk/our-work/research/healthy-social-media-report	54
Research \| Mental Health Foundationwww.mentalhealth.org.uk/our-work/research	54
Programmes \| Mental Health Foundationwww.mentalhealth.org.uk/our-work/programmes	54
Barnardo’s \| Mental Health Foundationwww.mentalhealth.org.uk/our-work/research/barnardos	54
OPEN - Our Personal Experience Network \| Mental Health Foundationwww.mentalhealth.org.uk/our-work/research/open	54
Refugee programmes \| Mental Health Foundationwww.mentalhealth.org.uk/our-work/programmes/refugees	54
Our work \| Mental Health Foundationwww.mentalhealth.org.uk/our-work	54
About us \| Mental Health Foundationwww.mentalhealth.org.uk/about-us	54
Mental Health Foundation \| Everyone deserves good mental healthwww.mentalhealth.org.uk/	54

Combine adjacent links with the same destination

Mental Health Foundation

Where this issue has occurred