Curious about how accessible the web really is? For the past six years, WebAIM, a global leader in web accessibility, has been conducting annual evaluations of the top one million homepages, highlighting the ongoing challenges and progress in making the web more accessible.
Their 2024 report found that 95.9% of homepages had Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) failures, meaning that just over 4% of the one million evaluated homepages fully complied with WCAG 2 level A and AA standards. Since the evaluation relies on automated tools, WebAIM suggests that the actual conformance rate is likely even lower. Although these figures show that much of the web remains largely inaccessible to people with disabilities, there has been some improvement over the past five years. Interestingly, the data indicates a growing divide: pages that were more accessible have continued to improve, while less accessible pages have become even more problematic.
They also reported that the most common errors have remained consistent over the past few years, with 96.4% of all detected errors falling into just six categories. The top three issues are:
- Low Color Contrast Text: This was the most common error found on 81% of the evaluated homepages.
- Missing Alternative Text for Images: This issue has become more prevalent as homepages become increasingly graphical. WebAIM estimates that one-third of images on popular homepages have missing, questionable, or repetitive alternative text.
- Missing Form Input Labels: Although the number of form inputs on homepages has nearly doubled in the last five years, 35.5% of them are not properly labeled.
The good news is that addressing these issues could significantly improve web accessibility, making a meaningful difference for millions of users.
Some other interesting findings include:
- Headings: The number of headings found on the homepage decreased by 4% from the previous year, with nearly 38% of homepages skipping heading levels and over 11% lacking headings entirely.
- ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications): The report found that homepages with more ARIA attributes tended to have more accessibility errors. While this does not necessarily mean that ARIA caused these errors, it underscores the idea that poorly implemented ARIA is worse than no ARIA at all.
- Government and Education Websites: These sites were found to be more accessible compared to those from other sectors, suggesting that regulation and support have a positive impact on improving web accessibility.
The report also contains technology-specific data. If you have ever wondered whether popular content management systems such as WordPress or frameworks like Bootstrap positively or negatively affect webpage accessibility, check out the WebAIM Million 2024 Report.
Want to know if our university homepages are among the million sites analyzed? The answer is yes. WebAIM offers a homepage lookup tool that lets anyone check their site’s ranking and accessibility status within the study. You can find information on all four domains: uillinois.edu, Illinois.edu, uic.edu, and uis.edu.
