In this blog post, we unravel the complex nature of web accessibility. We delve into laundry lists of errors, intricacies of home page complexities, and offer an intimate knowledge of website standards.
Ground Rules and Methodology
Our evaluation targets various websites excluding those without home pages, pages that returned errors (404, etc.), pages with fewer than 10 HTML elements, and pages with more than 5,000 links to the same domain for SEO purposes.
Please be aware that the absence of detected errors does not necessarily indicate that a site is accessible or compliant.
Glaring Numbers: Detected Errors
Our evaluation flagged 49,991,225 distinct accessibility errors across one million home pages. That’s an average of 50.0 errors per page. Users with disabilities would expect to encounter errors on 1 in every 21 home page elements with which they engage.
Assessing Home Page Complexity
Home page elements have ballooned over 34% in the last 4 years. While detected errors saw a slight decrease, the increase in page complexity seems to dwarf these accessibility strides.
WCAG Conformance
Sadly,only about 20.7% of pages examined had 5 or fewer detected errors with 30.8% having 10 or fewer. WCAG failures mostly fell into a few categories such as low contrast text and missing alternative text for images.
WCAG Failure Table
| WCAG Failure Type | % of home pages in 2023 | % of home pages in 2022 | % of home pages in 2021 | % of home pages in 2020 | % of home pages in 2019 |
|——————|—————————|————————–|————————–|—————————|————————-|
| Low contrast text | 83.6% | 83.9% | 86.4% | 86.3% | 85.3% |
| Missing alternative text for images| 58.2% | 55.4% | 60.6% | 66.0% | 68.0% |
| Empty links | 50.1% | 49.7% | 51.3% | 59.9% | 58.1% |
| Missing form input labels | 45.9% | 46.1% | 54.4% | 53.8% | 52.8% |
| Empty buttons | 27.5% | 27.2% | 26.9% | 28.7% | 25.0% |
| Missing document language | 18.6% | 22.3% | 28.9% | 28.0% | 33.1% |
Fixing Just A Few Issues: A Game Changer
Experience shows that by addressing these common failures, we could significantly alter the accessibility landscape across the web.
Towards Better Automated Accessibility Testing
Despite a challenging field, brighter days are on the horizon. Our year-on-year automated accessibility tests are uncovering fewer violations, marking a progressive step towards global web accessibility improvement. However, we cannot rest on our laurels. Making all web content universally accessible is our end game.
Tags: #WebAccessibility #Errors #WCAG #HomePageComplexity
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