WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

Alexa 100 Accessibility Update #2

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

Skip lengthy table

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!

Comments

  1. Digital A11Y

    Very interesting study… Good to know that the number of errors had come down since the last study…. I am working on a similar study & will publish my results soon on my blog