The results from the April 2018 Survey of Web Accessibility Practitioners are now available at http://webaim.org/projects/practitionersurvey2/. There were 724 respondents. This was a follow-up to the 2014 Practitioners Survey.
Here are a few interesting and surprising findings:
- Those in the web accessibility field were generally older, better paid, and better educated than our peers in broader web design/development.
- 26.4% of respondents reported having a disability. This is significantly higher than other technology fields.
- Salary disparity was reported between men and women, though this pay gap has gotten smaller since 2014. In corporations/industry, women reported making slightly more than men, though women made notably less than men in other sectors, especially education, government, and self-employment
- Respondents with disabilities made notably less than those without disabilities, though this reported pay gap has decreased significantly since 2014.
- Chrome was the most popular browser among respondents at 52.5%. Usage of Chrome was lower among respondents with disabilities, though its use by this audience increased to 38% from 16.6% in 2014.
- 63.1% of respondents indicated that their organization’s web site is highly accessible.
- Respondents were generally positive about web accessibility progress and the impact that ARIA has had on the web.
- Only 7.2% of respondents learned anything substantive about web accessibility in their formal schooling.
- NVDA was the most popular screen reader used in testing, followed by VoiceOver and JAWS. There were noted differences in the screen readers used by respondents with disabilities (primarily JAWS) vs. those without disabilities (primarily NVDA and VoiceOver).
- A wide variety of testing tools were used, with WAVE, aXe, Google Developer Tools, online contrast checkers, and accessibility bookmarklets/scripts being most commonly used.
- There were significant disparities between what motivates web accessibility practitioners and what they say motivates their organizations to implement accessibility. Individuals were primarily motivated by morals (it’s the right thing to do), whereas this is reported to be at much lower levels for organizations.
- Respondents generally indicated having a positive impact on the lives of people with disabilities.
Additional data and details are available in the full survey results.