UTHealth Houston

UTHealth Houston Alumni

First time visit: View without clicking anything

Clinical Trials Resource Center - UTHealth Houston

Office of Research - UTHealth Houston

Research - UTHealth Houston News - UTHealth Houston

404 Error - Page not found! - Main - UTHealth Houston

Alumni Stories | UTHealth Houston Alumni

Office of Technology Management - UTHealth Houston

Bursar's Office - UTHealth Houston

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

University of Texas Health Science Center Houston

	Title / URL	Issues
	UTHealth Houstonwww.uth.edu/	2
	UTHealth Houston Alumniwww.uth.edu/alumni/	2
	First time visit: View without clicking anythingwww.uth.edu/	2
	Clinical Trials Resource Center - UTHealth Houstonwww.uth.edu/ctrc/	2
	Office of Research - UTHealth Houstonwww.uth.edu/research/	2
	Research - UTHealth Houston News - UTHealth Houstonwww.uth.edu/news/research	2
	404 Error - Page not found! - Main - UTHealth Houstonwww.uth.edu/invented-url-for-404-page	2
	Alumni Stories \| UTHealth Houston Alumniwww.uth.edu/alumni/stories/	2
	Office of Technology Management - UTHealth Houstonwww.uth.edu/otm/	2
	Bursar's Office - UTHealth Houstonwww.uth.edu/bursars/	2

Combine adjacent links with the same destination

University of Texas Health Science Center Houston

Where this issue has occurred