Goal
Ensure that all users can identify the purpose of a link. Ideally the link text alone should allow for this.
Why this matters
Screen reader users often listen to links of of context by listening to all the links on a page or by navigating through only the links. Without quality link names, the screen reader user may not have any idea of the purpose of the links.
How to implement
Writer
Read Links.
Developer
Follow the instructions in Does the link have programmatically-discernable text? to ensure the Writer’s link text is encoded correctly.
How to test
Manual testing
Scan the list of links on the page and ensure you can identify each one as having unique link text. This may also require inspecting the links for aria-labelledby or aria-label attributes.
Automated testing
HTML validators should report back an error if the <a> element is empty or malformed. Note that validators cannot determine if the text is correct.