Every year WebAIM runs automated tests on the home pages of the top one million websites. The 2026 report, from a February 2026 crawl, ended a six-year run of slow improvement.
The headline numbers
- 95.9% of home pages had detected WCAG 2 failures, up from 94.8% the year before.
- Pages averaged 56.1 errors, up 10.1% from 51.
- Pages averaged 1,437 elements, so there is simply more page to get wrong.
- ARIA use rose 27%, to 133.6 attributes per page. Pages that used ARIA averaged 59.1 errors, against 42 for pages without it.
WebAIM points to AI-assisted coding ("vibe coding") as one factor. That fits what we see: generated markup often adds ARIA attributes that look helpful and contradict the HTML underneath.
These are automated results, so they are a floor: real pages have more problems than a crawler can detect.
The six most common errors, and the fix for each
1. Low contrast text (83.9% of pages). Body text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1, large text 3:1 (WCAG 1.4.3). Check your design tokens, not just individual pages: one grey in a theme fails everywhere it is used. Our contrast checker gives the exact ratio.
2. Missing alternative text (53.1%). Every informative image needs alt text that says what the image is for; decorative images get alt="" (WCAG 1.1.1).
3. Missing form labels (51%). A placeholder is not a label. Use a visible <label> tied to the field with for and id (WCAG 1.3.1).
4. Empty links (46.3%). Icon links with no text read as just "link". Add visible text or an aria-label that says where the link goes (WCAG 2.4.4).
5. Empty buttons (30.6%). The same problem for buttons: an icon-only button needs an accessible name (WCAG 4.1.2).
6. Missing document language (13.5%). One attribute, <html lang="en">, tells screen readers how to pronounce the page (WCAG 3.1.1).
Why this is good news, in a way
These six are among the easiest problems to find and fix, and they usually come from a few shared components. Fixing a header, a card template and a form component often clears hundreds of findings at once. Start there before chasing individual pages.
Sources: WebAIM: The WebAIM Million and Nexer Digital's analysis of the 2026 report.