A link with an image has no text or alt text
In the reportImage link has no accessible name
image_link_no_accessible_name · Review item
This appears when a link contains images but no text of its own, and none of the images has alt text, so the link may lack an accessible name. Its purpose may be unclear to screen-reader users, and it gives Google no alt text to use as anchor text. Give the image useful alt text, or put text inside the link.
Severity: Low. Handle it in your next round of content changes; it is an accessibility and link-context fix, not a ranking blocker.
Why it matters
Accessibility guidelines count a link whose only content is an image with no accessible name as a failure, because the link cannot be identified. Google notes that the alt text of an image used as a link works as the link's anchor text.
What to do
- Look at the finding: it lists up to ten image links flagged by this check, with the link and image addresses where available.
- Add alt text to the image that says where the link goes, such as
alt="Example Bakery home"on a logo link. - Or put text inside the same link, and give the image
alt=""so the name is not repeated.
When to leave it as it is: if the link has a useful aria-label or title on the <a>, that may name it for people. An aria-labelledby works only when its referenced elements provide a useful name; check those references yourself, because this rule skips any non-empty aria-labelledby without resolving them. A new audit cannot confirm a skipped link as fixed from this rule alone, so alt text or visible link text is the fix it can confirm.
What we read
We read each <a href> that contains <img> elements in the HTML of pages that answered 200, without running JavaScript. A link is reported when it has no text inside it and none of its images has non-empty alt text.
A link is skipped when the link itself has a non-empty aria-label, aria-labelledby or title, or contains <svg>, <input>, <object>, <embed> or <canvas>. The image's own aria-label or title is not read, so either one alone can still leave the link reported. Pages marked noindex are checked too.
Example & evidence
Illustrative example — one link, not a live audit.
The homepage https://bakery.example/ has a logo link as its first link:
<header><a href="/"><img src="/img/logo.png" alt=""></a></header>The link holds only an image with empty alt and has no other name in this example, so the page is reported: 1 image link has no accessible name.
A possible correction:
<a href="/"><img src="/img/logo.png" alt="Example Bakery home"></a>Confirm & check again
Check for yourself: view the page source and look at links that wrap an <img>: each needs alt text on the image or text inside the link.
Check again: Full audit — run a new audit of the site. The finding closes when the page is read again as a complete HTML page with no image link matching this check's limited text-and-alt test. If the page has any link the check skips, for example one named with aria-label or title, or is only a frame for scripts, the change cannot be confirmed. A new full audit can also close it when complete evidence shows the address answering directly with 200 and a file that is not HTML, or starting with a permanent redirect whose whole chain stays within your site, provided the check gives a usable result.
Limits & sources
The check does not run the full accessible-name computation, so an image named only by its own aria-label or title is still reported. It does not judge whether a name is useful, and buttons, image maps, CSS backgrounds and links added by JavaScript are not checked.
Confidence: High because the link's content and the images' alt text are read directly.
Sources
- W3C, Technique F89: Failure due to not providing an accessible name for an image which is the only content in a link — defines the failure of a link that contains only an image and cannot be identified by an accessible name. Checked 25 September 2026.
- W3C, Technique H2: Combining adjacent image and text links for the same resource — shows the image and its text in one link, with null alt on the image to avoid repeating the text. Checked 25 September 2026.
- Google, Google image SEO best practices — says an image's alt text is useful as anchor text when the image is used as a link. Checked 25 September 2026.
Editorial review: 29 September 2026