The WebAIM Million report shows that there are significant and pervasive accessibility issues on the web. Many have inquired if the state of accessibility is getting better or worse. We will re-analyze these 1 million home pages in the future to track changes.

In the meantime, we do have some small-scale data from the Alexa Top 100 home pages that were first analyzed using WAVE for accessibility issues in 2011 and then again in 2017. A re-analysis in 2019 of these same 100 pages (most of which are still very popular) shows the following errors (excluding WCAG contrast errors) over time.

Home Page Data

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Site Name 2019 Errors 2017 Errors 2011 Errors myspace.com 160 158 10 washingtonpost.com 103 111 43 tmz.com 100 88 30 slickdeals.net 97 77 306 imgur.com 97 25 19 reddit.com 94 61 24 espn.com 89 238 18 dailymail.co.uk 85 59 22 kohls.com 84 117 51 latimes.com 74 34 67 answers.com 63 21 61 go.com 58 47 44 aol.com 56 177 15 homedepot.com 54 17 90 yelp.com 46 54 3 match.com 46 43 26 usatoday.com 44 208 105 vimeo.com 41 42 3 pof.com 41 36 17 godaddy.com 40 33 16 jcpenney.com 39 30 1 foxsports.com 34 32 19 sears.com 33 36 15 imdb.com 31 42 20 foxnews.com 31 49 220 cnet.com 30 53 20 salesforce.com 29 37 22 barnesandnoble.com 28 21 29 nytimes.com 27 96 58 cnn.com 26 27 89 youtube.com 25 48 8 photobucket.com 23 23 18 shopathome.com 22 22 8 wellsfargo.com 22 7 2 msn.com 21 60 5 newegg.com 19 23 6 americanexpress.com 19 13 4 huffingtonpost.com 18 123 9 allrecipes.com 18 119 15 yahoo.com 16 13 9 drudgereport.com 16 8 21 about.com 14 71 26 coupons.com 13 16 35 twitter.com 12 71 5 pandora.com 12 28 44 ebay.com 12 5 12 bing.com 11 47 0 weather.com 11 5 28 adobe.com 11 15 2 warriorforum.com 10 21 16 indeed.com 9 3 2 swagbucks.com 9 12 33 cbssports.com 9 9 17 tumblr.com 9 9 10 gap.com 8 23 22 ehow.com 7 334 1 macys.com 7 88 2 comcast.net 7 11 2 usps.com 7 3 5 toysrus.com 6 47 30 etsy.com 6 7 1 craigslist.org 6 6 2 bankofamerica.com 6 4 1 amazon.com 5 76 6 hulu.com 4 115 50 netflix.com 4 10 1 mywebsearch.com 4 16 1 walmart.com 4 0 29 att.com 3 16 30 verizonwireless.com 3 21 2 chase.com 3 4 51 pinterest.com 3 4 2 bestbuy.com 3 11 6 bbc.co.uk 3 2 21 target.com 3 14 12 facebook.com 3 14 8 reference.com 2 10 9 ask.com 2 3 11 google.com 2 5 6 stumbleupon.com 2 5 6 nfl.com 1 73 107 fedex.com 1 24 23 capitalone.com 1 16 55 groupon.com 1 3 11 live.com 1 2 5 flickr.com 1 1 25 apple.com 1 1 0 linkedin.com 1 5 18 ups.com 1 55 24 wsj.com 0 33 16 pch.com 0 57 0 constantcontact.com 0 12 28 wordpress.com 0 14 8 paypal.com 0 5 3 rr.com 0 12 39 wordpress.org 0 5 1 blogspot.com 0 5 0 wikipedia.org 0 3 1 microsoft.com 0 2 11 thepiratebay.org 0 0 2

Analysis

The average number of detectable non-contrast errors increased significantly from 25 in 2011 to 40 in 2017. However, the average number of errors has since decreased to 23 today. The average number of contrast errors per home page in 2017 was 70, but is 33 today.

This suggests notable improvement since 2017. Regardless, these home pages still average 56 detectable errors each (the average across the WebAIM Million was nearly 60 errors per home page). Significant work is still needed to ensure basic accessibility for users with disabilities, but these data may suggest that we’re on the right track!