A Link That Opens a New Window

What actually goes wrong

A link opens in a new window or tab, the previous page is still there behind it, and the visitor does not necessarily know that happened.

When they want to go back, they press back, and nothing happens, because the new window has no history to go back to.

For somebody using a screen reader or navigating by keyboard, the context has changed without any announcement.

That is the whole problem, and it affects far more people than the accessibility framing suggests.

Who this affects most

• Screen reader users, with no visual cue.
• Anybody on a phone, where tabs are hidden.
• People with cognitive differences.
• Anybody not confident with a browser.
• Everybody, occasionally.

The second is the largest group by a wide margin. On a phone the new tab simply replaces the view, there is no visible tab strip, and the back gesture does nothing, which strands people regularly.

The simplest answer is not to

Which is the recommendation people resist.

The usual reason given is keeping the visitor on your site, and it does not work: somebody who has finished with your page leaves either way.

Letting a link behave normally means back works, the browser does what everybody expects, and nobody is stranded.

Anybody who genuinely wants a new tab can open one themselves, which every browser supports and which respects their choice rather than making it for them.

That single change resolves this entirely and costs nothing.

Most small business sites have very few links where a new window is genuinely justified.

Where it is genuinely justified

Since there are real cases.

A link from inside a form somebody is part way through filling in, where losing the page would lose their answers.

A document that opens in a viewer rather than as a page.

A reference somebody is meant to consult alongside what they are doing.

In those cases the behaviour is helpful and the requirement is simply to say so.

Everything else is habit rather than reasoning.

Say it in the link text

Which is the fix when you do keep the behaviour.

Adding the words opens in a new window to the link text means everybody is told, in the same way, before they activate it.

An icon alone does not do this, since an icon with no accessible name is announced as nothing.

Where an icon is used, it needs text alongside it that a screen reader can read.

Putting the warning after the link is too late, because somebody navigating by links never hears it.

The words belong inside the link, which is the only place that works for everybody.

A worked example

A business had every external link set to open a new window, including the ones to their own social profiles and a supplier's site.

An older customer telephoned to say the website had stopped working, and what had happened was four stacked tabs on a phone with no way back.

They changed all of them to ordinary links except one, a form that opened a reference document part way through.

That one kept the behaviour and gained the words in the link text.

Nobody has mentioned it since, and their time on site did not change, which was the fear.

The change was a setting in the editor rather than any development work.

Find them all at once

Since they are scattered.

A free accessibility checker will list links that open new windows, and many editors show it as a checkbox per link.

The usual finding is that it was applied inconsistently by whoever added each link over several years.

Go through the list, keep the two or three that are justified, and change the rest.

Check the footer and the header specifically, since the social links there are almost always set this way by default.

Those are also the links that appear on every page, so each one is the same decision repeated across the whole site.

The technical note worth knowing

Brief, and worth passing to whoever maintains the site.

A link opening a new window should carry the attribute that prevents the new page from having any access to yours, which is a security consideration rather than an accessibility one.

Modern browsers handle this by default now, and older setups may not.

It costs nothing to include and is worth asking about if you have links to sites you do not control.

That is one sentence in a message to your developer rather than something to act on yourself.

Documents are the case worth thinking about

Since they behave differently from an ordinary page and people expect that.

A link to a price list or a specification sheet that downloads or opens in a viewer is a genuine change of context, whether or not it opens a new window.

Say what it is in the link text: the document type and roughly its size, so nobody on a limited connection is surprised.

Download the current price list as a document, two megabytes, tells somebody what is about to happen before it happens.

That is the same principle as the new window warning, applied to the other common case where a link does not behave like a link.

The counter-case

Some people prefer new windows.

Plenty of visitors like external links opening separately and find the alternative annoying, which is a genuine preference rather than a mistake.

Certain contexts, particularly a partly completed form, are stronger arguments for the behaviour than the general case against it.

And this remains a minor problem compared with a form that cannot be completed at all, which is where the effort should go first.

Turn it off for ordinary links, keep it only where losing the page would cost something, and say so in the link text where you keep it.

The check

1. List links opening new windows.
2. Check the header and footer.
3. Turn it off for ordinary links.
4. Keep it only where justified.
5. Add the words to the link text.
6. Do not rely on an icon alone.
7. Test on a phone.

Step seven is where the problem is most visible, since a phone gives no sign that a new tab opened and the back gesture simply does nothing.

How links between pages should behave is covered in linking between your own pages.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.