diff --git a/changelog.md b/changelog.md
--- a/changelog.md
+++ b/changelog.md
@@ -1,5 +1,13 @@
 # Revision history for skylighting and skylighting-core
 
+## 0.8.4
+
+  * HTML output: use aria-hidden="true" on empty a elements
+    unless numberLines is specified (in which case the element
+    is still empty but will have content added by CSS).
+    This is to avoid excess noise when the code blocks are
+    read by screen readers.  See jgm/pandoc#6352.
+
 ## 0.8.3.4
 
   * Update syntax descriptions for: cmake agda c coffee doxygenlua html
diff --git a/skylighting-core.cabal b/skylighting-core.cabal
--- a/skylighting-core.cabal
+++ b/skylighting-core.cabal
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 name:                skylighting-core
-version:             0.8.3.4
+version:             0.8.4
 synopsis:            syntax highlighting library
 description:         Skylighting is a syntax highlighting library.
                      It derives its tokenizers from XML syntax
diff --git a/src/Skylighting/Format/HTML.hs b/src/Skylighting/Format/HTML.hs
--- a/src/Skylighting/Format/HTML.hs
+++ b/src/Skylighting/Format/HTML.hs
@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@
 import Text.Blaze.Html
 import qualified Text.Blaze.Html5 as H
 import qualified Text.Blaze.Html5.Attributes as A
+import Data.String (fromString)
 #if !MIN_VERSION_base(4,11,0)
 import Data.Semigroup
 #endif
@@ -89,7 +90,12 @@
 sourceLineToHtml opts lno cont =
   H.span ! A.id lineNum
          $ do
-           H.a ! A.href lineRef $ mempty
+           H.a ! A.href lineRef
+               ! (if numberLines opts
+                     then mempty
+                     else customAttribute (fromString "aria-hidden")
+                           (fromString "true")) -- see jgm/pandoc#6352
+               $ mempty
            mapM_ (tokenToHtml opts) cont
   where  lineNum = toValue prefixedLineNo
          lineRef = toValue ('#':prefixedLineNo)