WebAIM Million 2026: accessibility gets worse, 95.9% of home pages fail

WebAIM, the accessibility organisation based at Utah State University, scans the home pages of the top one million websites each year. The latest round collected data in February 2026, with the report updated on 30 March 2026. The results are not encouraging.

Detectable WCAG 2 failures appeared on 95.9% of home pages, up from 94.8% in 2025. The average was 56.1 errors per page, about 10.1% higher than the 51 recorded a year earlier. Because automated tools catch only some issues, WebAIM estimates that the true share of fully conformant pages is likely below 4.1%.

Pages are also getting busier. The average home page now has 1,437 elements, up 14.3% in a single year. The more elements a page has, the more places there are for screen reader or keyboard users to get stuck.

What stands out is that most problems are not complex. Six error types account for 96% of all detected errors, and they are the same six that have topped the report for years.

First is low-contrast text, found on 83.9% of home pages. It affects older users, people with low vision, and anyone reading a phone in bright sunlight.

• Low-contrast text: 83.9% of pages
• Images missing alternative text: 53.1%
• Form inputs missing labels: 51%
• Empty links with no text describing the destination: 46.3%
• Empty buttons with no name: 30.6%
• Missing document language: 13.5%

ARIA is a set of attributes that describe page elements to assistive technology. This year the scan found more than 133 million ARIA attributes, an average of over 133 per page. That is up 27% on last year and more than six times the 2019 level. Pages using ARIA (excluding landmarks) rose to 82.7%, from 79.4%.

Yet pages with ARIA averaged 59.1 errors, compared with 42 on pages without it. WebAIM is careful not to blame ARIA directly, since pages that use it tend to be more complex. One clear example, though: 22% of menus using role="menu" introduced barriers because the required structure and interactions were missing.

The lesson is that wrong ARIA can be worse than none. Using semantic HTML from the start, such as a button element for buttons and an a element for links, is still the safest route.

The report does not measure AI-generated code directly. In its conclusion, WebAIM suggests the rise in errors likely reflects heavier reliance on third-party frameworks and libraries, as well as AI-assisted coding, often called “vibe coding”. WebAIM presents this as a probable explanation, not a proven finding.

Priority Pixels’ summary of the report also lists averages by platform: WordPress home pages averaged 52.8 errors, Shopify 75.1 and Magento 75.8. These figures do not prove one platform is better, since themes, plugins and customisation vary widely between sites.

In our view, contrast problems can be even worse on Thai-language sites. Many Thai fonts have thin strokes and small tone marks and vowels above and below the line. When designers choose light grey text on white for a “minimal” look, Thai text becomes hard to read faster than English.

Another common issue is pages that do not declare lang="th", which can make screen readers read Thai text with the wrong voice or rules. Promotional banners made entirely of images without alt text are also widespread, leaving both screen reader users and search engines unaware of what the image says.

Thailand is already an aged society. Customers with weaker eyesight or less confidence on a phone are a growing group, so making a site easy to read and tap is a sales issue, not only a compliance one.

Because six problems cover almost everything, fixing them in order gives the best return. Free tools such as WebAIM’s WAVE or Lighthouse help find a starting point, but testing with a keyboard and a real screen reader should come alongside.

Build these checks into normal work: check contrast when choosing colours in design, and check alt text and labels before every release. Fixing problems later usually takes longer than getting them right from the start.

• Check text colour contrast across the design system, especially grey text on white
• Add meaningful alt text to informative images and move banner text into real page text
• Make sure every form field has a label and every icon button has an accessible name
• Declare lang="th" or the correct language on every page
• Use semantic HTML first, and add ARIA only where it is needed