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Links & buttons

In-page link goes nowhere

WCAG 2.2 success criterion 2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context) (Level A)

WCAG 2.2
2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context)
Level
A
Default severity
Error
Available in
Free

Why it matters

A "jump to section" link — a table of contents, a "Back to top" or a "See the prices below" — only works if the section it points at has a matching anchor. When the anchor is missing, nothing happens: keyboard and screen reader users stay where they were, with no hint why. It usually breaks when a heading is reworded or a block is copied and its HTML anchor is lost.

Who it affects: Screen reader users who browse by a list of links, keyboard users, and people using voice control who say a link's words to click it.

What Lumtera flags

Links whose address starts with # when no element in the content has that ID (or name). Each missing anchor is reported once. Targets the theme normally provides outside the content — such as #top, #main, #content, #comments and #respond — are skipped, as are links that open menus, tabs, modals, popups or lightboxes. When a heading has text matching the anchor, a table-of-contents plugin may add the ID when the page is shown, so the item becomes a warning asking you to test the link on the live page.

Check ID link-anchor-missing — use it to filter the content report or with wp lumtera issues --rule.

How to fix it in WordPress

Give the section the link should jump to a matching HTML anchor: select its block (usually a heading) and fill in Advanced > HTML anchor with the text after the # in the link, spelled exactly the same. Or change the link to point at an anchor that exists.

Example

Flagged
<a href="#opening-hours">Opening hours</a>
…
<h2>Opening hours</h2>
Fixed
<a href="#opening-hours">Opening hours</a>
…
<h2 id="opening-hours">Opening hours</h2>

How to check your fix

  1. Update the post. The issue disappears from the Accessibility sidebar on the next check, and from the site report on the next scan.
  2. Press Tab through the page. Every link and button should receive visible focus, and its text should make sense read on its own.

Find this issue across your whole site

Lumtera runs this check in the block editor sidebar as you write, in the Elementor panel, in Review mode on the live page, and across the whole site in the content report and with wp lumtera scan. You can change its severity or turn it off in Accessibility → Settings.

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