Accessibility Watch › Data Study
Web Accessibility Statistics: We Tested the Top 12 Websites
Web accessibility is a legal requirement — under the ADA in the U.S. and the European Accessibility Act in the EU. We ran an automated WCAG 2.1 Level AA scan on 12 popular websites to see how the group measures up.
How many popular websites pass accessibility checks?
8% failed the automated checks (grade C, D, or F). Of 12 sites scanned: 11 scored an A, 1 graded C, 0 graded D, and 0 graded F.
Grades reflect the high-frequency barriers automated scanners most often flag — so an A means a site is clean on those, not that it has zero issues of any kind. Across the full set of WCAG 2.1 AA checks, sites averaged 3.4 types of barrier.
The most common accessibility failures
| Barrier | Share of sites |
|---|---|
| Some content on the page isn’t inside a recognized region (header, nav, main, footer, aside). | 67% |
| This page has no ‘main content’ region marked. | 42% |
| A button’s visible text doesn’t match the description it announces to screen readers. | 33% |
| Heading levels skip — for example, an H2 jumps directly to an H4 with no H3 between them. | 33% |
| Some buttons or links are too small to tap reliably on touch screens. | 25% |
| Ensure role attribute has an appropriate value for the element | 25% |
| Ensure landmarks are unique | 17% |
| An iframe (embedded content) has no title. | 17% |
| Ensure ARIA attributes are not prohibited for an element’s role | 8% |
| Links inside paragraphs are distinguishable from the surrounding text by color alone. | 8% |
The most accessible popular websites
These scored an A — clean on the high-frequency barriers we grade:
- microsoft.com
- github.com
- wordpress.org
- play.google.com
- en.wikipedia.org
- maps.google.com
- apps.apple.com
- docs.google.com
- vimeo.com
- whatsapp.com
- policies.google.com
Methodology
We scanned each site with axe-core 4.11.4 against WCAG 2.1 Level AA, in its default state, and reported automatically-detectable failures. Automated testing catches a portion of accessibility barriers; full conformance also requires manual and assistive-technology testing. See our methodology for details.
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Check your site — free
Web accessibility is required under the ADA and the EU's European Accessibility Act. The free wcagcheckr extension finds the issues on your own pages and shows you exactly how to fix each one — at no cost.