Is it OK to have an empty anchor tag?

Question

I know that I can do the following if I want to turn an image into a click-able link:

Answer 1

It is not OK at all, since it breaks fundamental accessibility principles. There is no way to specify alternative text for a background image, the same way you can and should specify it using an alt attribute in an img tag for a content image. See WCAG 2.0 Guideline 1.1.

If you wish to change an image on mouseover, there are CSS and JavaScript techniques for that.

Answer 2

It's valid, but it's best if you did put something in there and used something like

font-size: 0;

to hide it away. This way, if someone does not have CSS (screen readers for example), he would still be able to tell approximately what the link is about.

Here's a great article on the subject

Answer 3

It is perfectly valid, but if you want, you can put a blank space inside: &nbsp;

Answer 4

Over at Markup.tips we recently did some accessibility testing in iOS 8 and discovered that VoiceOver will not navigation to empty links. There must at least be a non-breaking space. Whether this should be considered an iOS bug or not we are not sure.

Answer 5

Use   as the text, and you are good.