7.3 Include non-link printable characters between adjacent links
The New Zealand Web Standards 2.0 were released in March 2009 and replace the previous version, the New Zealand Government Web Standards 1.0 (below). See Meeting the standards for more information.
The Standard
7.3 Include non-link, printable characters (surrounded by spaces) between adjacent links and also have a space between links.
Guide to this standard
The WAI Accessibility Guidelines recommend putting a printing character like a " | " between adjacent links.
This standard is necessary until user agents (including assistive technologies) render adjacent links distinctly.
This standard covers the W3C WAI checkpoint 10.5 for NZ government agencies.
Rationale for this standard
Apart from being difficult to distinguish visually for users even with no visual impairment, some assistive technologies (generally older) have difficulty differentiating between hyperlinks when they have no visual (and correspondingly, textual) separation.
This can also help people with motor impairments.
