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Research Report · July 23, 2026

Top 50 Websites Accessibility Audit 2026

We scanned 52of the world's most visited websites with axe-core's WCAG 2.2 ruleset. Here's what we found — and what it means for the state of web accessibility.

48sites scanned
70violations found
1.5avg per site
96%error severity

Key Findings

65%
of scanned sites have at least one WCAG 2.2 violation. Only 17 sites passed with zero violations.
67
violations are critical or serious severity — issues that directly prevent users with disabilities from accessing content.
19%
of sites have insufficient color contrast — the most common violation, affecting 9 sites.
7.0
avg violations in the Health category — the worst-performing sector.

Most Common Violations

ViolationSites Affected% of Sites
Insufficient Color Contrast
color-contrast
919%
Missing Image Alt Text
image-alt
613%
Empty or Missing Link Text
link-name
613%
Invalid ARIA Attributes
aria-allowed-attr
510%
Tap Target Too Small
target-size
510%
Improper List Structure
list
48%
Missing Document Language
html-has-lang
48%
Viewport Meta Tag Issues
meta-viewport
36%
Nested Interactive Elements
nested-interactive
36%
Missing Document Title
document-title
36%

Violations by Industry Category

Health7 total · 7.0 avg
Streaming15 total · 3.0 avg
Productivity11 total · 1.8 avg
Social9 total · 1.3 avg
Finance5 total · 1.3 avg
E-commerce8 total · 1.1 avg
Tech9 total · 1.1 avg
Education1 total · 1.0 avg
News4 total · 0.8 avg
Travel1 total · 0.5 avg
Search0 total · 0.0 avg
Reference0 total · 0.0 avg

Worst Performing Sites

SiteViolationsErrors
WebMD
Health
77
Zoom
Productivity
66
AliExpress
E-commerce
55
Spotify
Streaming
54
YouTube
Streaming
44
The Guardian
News
44
Twitch
Streaming
44
Reddit
Social
33
TikTok
Social
33
Bank of America
Finance
33

Sites With Zero Violations

These 17 sites passed the axe-core WCAG 2.2 scan with zero violations. This means their homepage meets the automated accessibility checks — though manual testing may still reveal issues.

GoogleWikipediaFacebookInstagramPinterestWalmartEtsyTargetCNNBBCReutersBloombergGitHubMicrosoftFigmaStripeAirbnb

Full Results

#SiteViolations
1WebMD7
2Zoom6
3AliExpress5
4Spotify5
5YouTube4
6The Guardian4
7Twitch4
8Reddit3
9TikTok3
10Bank of America3
11LinkedIn2
12Stack Overflow2
13Apple2
14OpenAI2
15Notion2
16Twitter/X1
17Amazon1
18Shopify1
19Home Depot1
20Mozilla1
21Cloudflare1
22Anthropic1
23Netflix1
24Disney1
25Google Docs1
26Slack1
27Dropbox1
28PayPal1
29Chase Bank1
30Expedia1
31Coursera1
32Google0
33Wikipedia0
34Facebook0
35Instagram0
36Pinterest0
37Walmart0
38Etsy0
39Target0
40CNN0
41BBC0
42Reuters0
43Bloomberg0
44GitHub0
45Microsoft0
46Figma0
47Stripe0
48Airbnb0
Failed to scan (4): eBay, NY Times, Washington Post, Booking.com

Methodology

We selected 52of the world's most visited websites across 11 categories (search, social, e-commerce, news, tech, streaming, productivity, finance, travel, health, education).

Each site was loaded in a headless Chromium browser using Puppeteer with a 1280×800 viewport. After the page loaded, axe-core v4.12 was injected to run the WCAG 2.2 ruleset (tags: wcag2a, wcag2aa, wcag21a, wcag21aa, wcag22aa).

Violations are categorized by impact: critical (blocks access entirely), serious (partial barrier), moderate (inconvenience), and minor (minor annoyance).

Automated tools detect approximately 30-40% of WCAG issues. A clean scan does not guarantee full accessibility — manual testing with screen readers, keyboard navigation, and real users is always needed. This report captures a snapshot of each site's homepage at the time of scanning.

Test Your Own Website

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