When should you use Tap targets are large enough?
target-sizefunctionalrecommended
A link or button too small to hit gets mis-tapped by anyone with a tremor and by most people on a phone; every target must be at least 24 by 24 pixels or have that much clear space around it.
When should you use this check?
Run this at phone width above all — that is where a finger, not a cursor, is aiming. Dense footers, icon toolbars, pagination and close buttons are where it earns its keep. People with tremors and anyone on a moving train miss small targets that sit close together.
When should you not?
Links inside a sentence are exempt by the criterion, so a page of running prose will rarely fail. It does not judge whether a target is pleasant to tap, only whether it meets the minimum.
What does it inspect?
icon buttons smaller than 24px; tightly stacked text links; close buttons too small to hit
What does a failure mean?
A failure names a link or button smaller than 24 by 24 pixels whose neighbours are close enough that a 24-pixel circle centred on it overlaps another target. Each one is a place a reader is likely to hit the wrong thing. Targets that are obscured or overlapping in ways the engine cannot resolve are listed for review.
What are the Standard defaults — and why?
24 by 24 CSS pixels, or that much clear space, is WCAG 2.2's Level AA minimum (2.5.8) and is fixed. The larger 44-pixel figure belongs to the AAA criterion 2.5.5 and is not applied.
How does an agent call it?
{ "type": "url", "validations": ["target-size"] }Who governs the Standard?
SchemaFirst.org publishes community-governed standards for digital QA. ArbiterQA is a supporter and commercial licensee of those standards; citation does not mean SchemaFirst operates ArbiterQA.
Author ArbiterQA · Reviewed by ArbiterQA · 2026-10-01
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