However if you absolutely must use emoticons, then at least mark them up with some ARIA: Smiley face They recommend using the TITLE attribute even though it’s not well supported, or the ABBR or ACRONYM elements. The specific requirement is H86: Providing text alternatives for ASCII art, emoticons, and leetspeak, which means you need to provide text alternatives for things like smiley faces.

Under Success Criterion 1.1.1: Non-text content is the requirement to provide text alternatives for ASCII characters. Screen readers tell the user when they encounter a link, so you don’t need to use the words “ link” or “ links to” or “ goes to” in your link text. Rule 1 : Don’t use the word “link” in your links So, here is my 15 point checklist to keep in mind when linking text on the web. I still flag them as errors, but it’s almost impossible to find a success criterion that they fail. Sure, it’s a little more difficult to argue that “here” and “more” links are inaccessible strictly under WCAG2. Sure, “click here” links can be activated by the keyboard, but it implies that you need a mouse to activate the link. In my work auditing web sites, I identify all the “click here” links and flag them as accessibility failures.

Two of the most well-known sets of mobile accessibility guidelines - the W3C Mobile Best Practices and the BBC’s Mobile Accessibility Guidelines - suggest clearly identifying and describing the target of the link.

Link text also becomes a serious issue once you start talking about mobile and tablet sites. When confronted with a bunch of “ Click here to download the annual report” and “ More on boating”, such techniques are useless. Screen reader users also often scan a page by simply tabbing from link to link (without reading the text in-between). One common method is to generate a list of links (without context) to determine the content of the page. Screen reading applications offer only limited ways to interpret a page.

While the current W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines – WCAG2 – emphasise providing overall context for a link, little emphasis is placed on making the text of a link itself understandable to users with disabilities.

Html5 accessibility screen reader