Latest WebAIM Million analysis of the world’s top 1m websites finds that government and public sector are among the best-performing for digital accessibility, but that widespread issues remain.
For the eighth year running, the WebAIM Million report has analysed the homepages of the world’s top 1m websites – and this year finds that accessibility issues are getting noticeably worse. This year’s report found an average of 56.1 accessibility errors per page, up from 51 in 2025.
Photo by Elizabeth Woolner / Unsplash
The good news is that government websites feature the fewest such accessibility errors, thought the figure of 42.4 is still high. Some 22,345 government sites were analysed in the survey.
Next in the league table is websites from the non-profit and charity sector. Some 52,884 such sites were found to have an average of 43.0 accessibility errors among them.
Government and public sector platforms rank at the top of the accessibility league table because, the report suggests, of stronger governance, testing and accountability compared to many other industries. In countries such as the UK, government bodies have statutory duties to provide accessible information. However, even in these sectors and countries, the same core issues often persist.
The most common barriers to website accessibility include low-contrast text (found on 84% of home pages analysed), missing alternative text for images (53%), unlabelled form inputs (51%) and empty links (46%) or buttons (31%). The analysis also found increasing complexity on homepages, which now contain an average of 1,437 elements such as images, buttons and links – a 22.5% increase in just the past year.
Indeed, just less than 4% of all page elements was found to contain an accessibility error, meaning users encounter a barrier on roughly one in every 26 elements. The report also finds that a massive 95.9% of all homepages across all sectors fail to meet basic accessibility standards (WCAG 2A or AA).
In conclusion, accessibility issues remain widespread even in leading sectors. Nexer Digital’s latest Hidden Journey study of user behaviour demonstrates how these issues can still have a cumulative impact, so that even small barriers can affect overall experience. It found that 79% of disabled users struggled to browse, 81% found selecting options difficult or impossible, and 81% struggled to complete tasks.
Hilary Stephenson, Managing Director of Nexer Digital, says: ‘Government has shown that improvement is possible when accessibility is prioritised. But even the best-performing sectors are still failing many users. The fact that the vast majority of sites still do not meet basic standards shows how much work there is left to do.
‘Accessibility is not about perfection, it’s about consistency and intent. The public sector has made progress because of clear accountability and that’s something other sectors can learn from.’
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