Key takeaways
- In the 2025 WebAIM Million, 94.8% of the top one million home pages had detectable WCAG failures — an average of 51 errors per page.
- Six issues — low contrast, missing alt text, missing form labels, empty links, empty buttons and missing page language — make up most of those errors, and all are fixable.
- WCAG 2.2 Level AA is the sensible target; it adds rules for focus, touch targets, dragging, help and logins.
- Accessibility overlays don't fix the underlying code. Build it in, then test with real tools and real people.
On this page
Imagine a customer who can't use a mouse trying to book an appointment on your site. Or someone with low vision trying to read light-grey text on a white background. Or a screen-reader user landing on a button that just says "Click".
For a lot of people, that's an everyday experience — and for a lot of businesses, it's lost customers they never hear about. Here's what website accessibility means in practice, what the current standard (WCAG 2.2) asks for, and how to start improving your site this week.
Most websites still fail the basics
Every year, WebAIM runs automated accessibility tests on the home pages of the top one million websites. The 2025 results:
- 94.8% of home pages had detectable failures of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
- Home pages averaged 51 detectable errors each.
- Low-contrast text — the single most common issue — appeared on 79.1% of them.
And those are only the problems automated tools can find. Plenty more — confusing navigation, unclear error messages, inaccessible custom widgets — need a human to spot.
The upside: because so many sites fall short, getting accessibility right is a genuine way to stand out.
What WCAG 2.2 is
WCAG is the international standard for web accessibility, published by the W3C. Version 2.2 became an official W3C Recommendation in October 2023.
It's organised around four principles — content must be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust — and success criteria at three levels:
- Level A — the minimum.
- Level AA — the level most laws, policies and contracts point to. This is the sensible target for a business website.
- Level AAA — the highest level, usually applied to specific content rather than whole sites.
What's new in WCAG 2.2
WCAG 2.2 keeps everything from 2.1 (apart from one obsolete criterion about HTML parsing, which was removed) and adds new success criteria. The ones at Levels A and AA are:
- Focus Not Obscured (Minimum) — when someone tabs to a link or button, it mustn't be completely hidden behind things like sticky headers or cookie banners.
- Dragging Movements — anything you can do by dragging (sliders, reordering) must also work with a simple click or tap.
- Target Size (Minimum) — buttons and links need to be at least 24 × 24 CSS pixels, or have enough space around them.
- Consistent Help — if you offer help (contact details, chat, FAQs), it should appear in the same place across pages.
- Redundant Entry — don't make people type the same information twice in one process.
- Accessible Authentication (Minimum) — logging in shouldn't depend on a memory or puzzle test without an alternative, such as allowing password managers and copy-paste.
The six most common failures — and how to fix them
WebAIM reports that the same six issues have topped the list for the last five years. Fix these and you'll have dealt with most of what automated checks find.
1. Low-contrast text
Light-grey text, text over busy images and pale buttons are hard to read. WCAG AA asks for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. Check your brand colours with a contrast checker and adjust shades until they pass.
2. Missing alternative text on images
Screen readers announce images by their alt text. Give every meaningful image a short, descriptive alt, and mark purely decorative images with an empty one (alt="") so they're skipped.
3. Form fields without labels
Placeholder text isn't a label — it disappears when you type and often isn't read out. Every input needs a visible, programmatically connected label.
4. Empty links
Icon-only links (social icons, a logo, a "card" link) often have no text at all. Add text that says where the link goes, even if it's visually hidden.
5. Empty buttons
The same problem with buttons: a hamburger menu, a close "×" or a search icon needs an accessible name like "Open menu", "Close" or "Search".
6. Missing page language
One line of HTML (<html lang="en">) tells screen readers how to pronounce your content. It's easy to miss and takes seconds to fix.
Where the law stands
Accessibility isn't only good practice; in many places it's a legal duty. A few examples:
- United States (public bodies). The Department of Justice's ADA Title II rule requires state and local government websites and apps to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. In April 2026 the DOJ extended the deadlines by a year: April 26, 2027 for entities serving 50,000 people or more, and April 26, 2028 for smaller ones.
- United States (businesses). There's no equivalent federal rule for private websites yet, but businesses regularly face lawsuits over inaccessible sites, and courts often look to WCAG as the benchmark.
- European Union. The European Accessibility Act has applied since 28 June 2025, covering many products and services sold to EU consumers — including e-commerce.
Requirements differ by country and sector, so treat this as an overview, not legal advice.
A 15-minute accessibility check you can do today
You don't need special skills to find the biggest problems:
- Put your mouse away. Use only the Tab, Shift+Tab and Enter keys. Can you reach every link, menu and button? Can you always see where you are?
- Zoom to 200%. Does the page still work, or does text overlap and content disappear?
- Check your colours. Run your text and button colours through a free contrast checker.
- Look at your images. Do the important ones have descriptive alt text?
- Try a form. Does every field have a visible label? Submit it with a mistake — is the error clear and next to the field?
- Check your videos. Do they have captions?
- Run a free automated scan (such as WAVE or Lighthouse) for the issues tools can catch.
Why overlays aren't the answer
"One line of code" accessibility widgets promise instant compliance. They can't fix missing labels, broken keyboard access or confusing structure in your actual code, and many disabled users and accessibility specialists advise against relying on them. Fixing the site itself is the dependable route — and usually costs less than people expect.
Build it in, don't bolt it on
Accessibility is cheapest when it's part of the design and build: accessible colour palettes, semantic HTML, proper labels, keyboard testing and a check before every launch. At Corammers, we design every site with WCAG 2.2 AA in mind from the first wireframe.
If you'd like to know how your current site measures up, book a free 30-minute call. We'll run a quick accessibility check together and show you the fixes that matter most.
