I have a image where text/link is overlayed on top. My problem is that sometimes the text in the foreground will hide the link in the image in the background. I assume this is because the text box forms an invisible rectangle around the text, thus creating a region that appears it should belong to the image but is actually being covered by the text. I am wondering if it is possible that when I mouse over this region, I will be linking to my image link as oppose to my text link (see illustration).

Try this, i.e. put your tag inside : http://jsfiddle.net/WHpMr/3/
HTML:
CSS: