This, Still Not for Everyone

The new WebAIM Million report is out, the eighth annual accessibility analysis of the top one million home pages on the Web. And after eight years of data, the picture is as sobering as ever.

In 2019, 97.8% of home pages had detectable WCAG conformance failures. In 2026, that number is 95.9%. That’s less than two percentage points of improvement in seven years – and this year actually reversed the (minimal) downward trend, climbing back up from 94.8% in 2025. A statistician would likely consider this just normal variation rather than a meaningful change. The average number of errors per page, however, rose to 56.1, up over 10% from last year. Pages are getting more complex, ARIA usage is exploding (up 27% in a single year), and the same six types of errors – low contrast text, missing alt text, missing labels, empty links, empty buttons, missing document language – still account for 96% of all detected failures. They have been the same six issues for the entire duration of this study.

And these are only the errors that automated tools can detect. As anyone who has ever audited a website properly knows, the real numbers are always worse.

I know accessibility can feel like an uphill battle. And I know the discourse around it has become increasingly polarised in recent years, with more infighting, more blame, more frustration. I understand and feel the frustration, too. But blaming each other isn’t moving the needle. Just like accessibility overlays, it won’t make the Web more accessible. The numbers make that painfully clear.

What does move the needle is collaboration. It’s designers and developers sitting down together and caring about the basics. It’s teams making accessibility a shared responsibility from the start – not as an afterthought, not a compliance checkbox, not someone else’s problem. It’s treating the people who use our products with the respect they deserve. And it’s all of us helping each other, educating each other, pushing each other forward.

We are one community. But the Web we all love and care about still isn’t living up to its bold promise. It still isn’t for everyone. The only way we’ll make real progress is by working together – patiently, persistently, and with a whole lot less finger-pointing. One focus state, one component, one website at a time.

If your team needs support with accessibility – audits, training, or hands-on guidance to build more inclusive products – I can help. And we are many: professionals – humans – who deeply care and can help you make the Web a bit more for everyone.

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