What should the HREF attribute be for javascript links on a 508 compliant page?

Question

I know this question: Which "href" value should I use for JavaScript links, "#" or "javascript:void(0)"? contains a discussion of what the correct href content should be for javascript links. How does this relate to 508 compliance? Does anyone know if the javascript:void(0) is acceptable when click handlers are defined elsewhere in the javascript code?

Answer 1

This is where terminology becomes important - in terms of accessibility there is no such thing as "a javascript link". There are links, which are unadulterated anchor elements, and there are javascript behaviours, which should be assumed not-runnable for accessibility.

An empty anchor element that triggers javascript (so something like href='#' onclick='...') is not a link, it's a UI element for triggering page behaviour. For accessibility, don't abuse the anchor element for this, use a real UI element with the correct ARIA role.

For a click-through link (which do something like "click anchor" -> "magical JS is called" -> "window.location is changed to some new page") then be aware that you're semanticlaly misrepresenting your content. Even though you're using an anchor element, your use of it is not as a link, since it's not an anchor to another resource. Like in the above case, it's actually a button. The fact that the page location changes at the end does not change this.

For true accessibility, you'll have to give up any JavaScript-in-the-middle. But don't worry, that's much less severe than it sounds: the simplest solution is to use rerouting links instead. If you've ever used google.com or duckduckgo.com, etc. you'll already be familiar with this: rather than link out to the actual URL, link out to the URL proxied over a page-less script. You can guarantee that an anchor with the URL "http://our.domain.com/ref=http://the.actual.link.to.visit", will end up redirecting to the actual site just fine, and you can tack on any desired operation that should take place "when people click" as a server side action when you resolve the redirect.

508 compliance will be hard if you think you rely on JavaScript. So for accessibility: actively try not to. Enrich if you can use it, ensure things still work without it.