Links with images and text - combined or separate?

Question

For accessibility purposes when linking an image associated with a few brief words of text, is it better to put links on them separately or together?

Together:

<a href="to.html"><img src="">Go to this page</a>

Separately:

<a href="to.html"><img src=""></a><a href="to.html">Go to this page</a>

(Assuming we put other accessibility arguments aside - like alt attributes, etc.)

Answer 1

Combine them into a single link. Whether you put an alt attribute on the image that is non-empty, depends on whether the image is already described by the text or not.

http://www.w3.org/TR/2015/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20150226/H2