Admissions | The Cooper Union

Campus Safety and Security | The Cooper Union

The Great Hall | The Cooper Union

Trustees | The Cooper Union

| The Cooper Union

Contact & Location | The Cooper Union

Officers | The Cooper Union

Welcome | The Cooper Union

The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture | The Cooper Union

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

June 2025

May 2025

The Cooper Union

Title / URL	Issues
Admissions \| The Cooper Unioncooper.edu/admissions	68
Campus Safety and Security \| The Cooper Unioncooper.edu/about/safety	63
The Great Hall \| The Cooper Unioncooper.edu/about/great-hall	62
Trustees \| The Cooper Unioncooper.edu/about/trustees	62
\| The Cooper Unioncooper.edu/about/news	61
Contact & Location \| The Cooper Unioncooper.edu/about/contact	61
\| The Cooper Unioncooper.edu/people	61
Officers \| The Cooper Unioncooper.edu/about/officers	61
Welcome \| The Cooper Unioncooper.edu/welcome	61
The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture \| The Cooper Unioncooper.edu/architecture	61

Combine adjacent links with the same destination

The Cooper Union

Where this issue has occurred