Web Accessibility Statistics 2026: Errors, Lawsuits and Users

These web accessibility statistics for 2026 cover how many websites fail WCAG, which errors are most common, how many lawsuits are filed, and who is affected. Every figure links to the source we opened and gives the period it covers. Where sources disagree, as lawsuit counts often do, we show each one and explain why.

This page is written for US business owners, marketers and the people who build their sites. After each group of numbers we say what it means in practice. Figures were checked on October 23, 2026. This is general information, not legal advice.

The key numbers at a glance

Almost every website still fails basic accessibility tests, and lawsuits over it are rising again. In February 2026, WebAIM found detectable WCAG failures on 95.9% of the top one million home pages. In 2025, plaintiffs filed 3,117 website accessibility suits in US federal court, up 27% on 2024. Here are the headline numbers.

How many websites are accessible?

Fewer than about 4% of popular home pages pass even an automated WCAG check. The WebAIM Million 2026 report, which tested the home pages of the top one million websites in February 2026, found that "95.9% of home pages had detected WCAG 2 failures." It adds that the rate of full WCAG 2 A and AA conformance "was certainly lower than 4.1%", because automated tools cannot find every problem.

The trend has turned the wrong way. The 95.9% figure is up from 94.8% in 2025, "reversing a trend of small improvements each of the previous 6 years." WebAIM detected 56,114,377 distinct errors, an average of 56.1 per page, up 10.1% from 51 per page in 2025.

There is some good news at the edges. WebAIM reports that "20.5% of pages had 5 or fewer detected errors and 30.4% had 10 or fewer." A page with a handful of errors is often a few hours of work from passing an automated scan.

What this means for you

If your site has never been tested, assume it fails. That is not a judgement on your developer: it is the base rate. The useful question is how many errors you have and how serious they are. A free scan answers the first half in a minute.

What are the most common accessibility errors?

Low contrast text is the most common failure by far, found on 83.9% of home pages in 2026. WebAIM says "96% of all errors detected fall into these six categories" and that these six "have been the same for the last 7 years."

Source: WebAIM Million, share of home pages with each failure. Selected years from WebAIM's 2019 to 2026 table.

The details behind the top errors

• Contrast. "On average, each home page had 34 distinct instances of low-contrast text, up 15% from 2025." The HTTP Archive Web Almanac 2025 accessibility chapter reaches a similar conclusion from a different data set: only about 30% to 31% of mobile sites meet minimum contrast. The chapter gives both figures.
• Images. Home pages had 66.6 images on average. "16.2% of all home page images (10.8 per page on average) had missing alternative text." WebAIM adds that 45% of images missing alt text were linked images, which leaves a link with no name for a screen reader user.
• Forms. Home pages averaged 6.9 form inputs, "a 36% increase in the last 3 years", and 33.1% of those inputs "were not properly labeled."
• Structure. 41.8% of pages skipped heading levels and 18.1% had more than one h1. Only 46.1% had a main landmark.

What this means for you

The common errors are also the cheap ones. Contrast is a colour change in your stylesheet. Alt text and form labels are small edits. Empty links and buttons are usually icon buttons with no text label. Most of these can be fixed once in a shared template and the fix applies to every page. Our WCAG 2.2 checklist explains each criterion in plain language.

Are websites getting harder to make accessible?

Yes. Pages are getting bigger and more complex, and complexity brings errors. WebAIM counted 1,437 elements per home page on average in February 2026, "a 14.3% increase in only one year." The number "has nearly doubled in the last 7 years." One in every 26 elements had a detected error.

ARIA, the code meant to help assistive technology, is used far more than before. WebAIM found 82.7% of home pages used ARIA, up from 79.4%, and ARIA code "increased 27% in just one year." Pages with ARIA averaged 59.1 errors against 42 for pages without it. WebAIM is careful to say this "does not necessarily mean that ARIA introduced these errors", since pages with ARIA also tend to be more complex.

WebAIM's own explanation for the 2026 rise points at how code is now written. Its conclusion links the increase to "automated or AI-assisted coding practices ('vibe coding')." That is WebAIM's interpretation, not a measured cause, but it matches what we see in audits: generated code often looks right and fails with a keyboard or screen reader.

What this means for you

Every new widget, slider and popup is a new place for barriers. Before adding one, ask whether it earns its place. After adding one, test it with a keyboard. If AI tools write part of your code, test that code the same way you would test a junior developer's work.

Which platforms and frameworks have the fewest errors?

Most common CMS platforms average fewer errors than the web as a whole. WebAIM's 2026 data shows "most pages that use a common CMS had fewer errors than average." The sample average was 56.1 errors per page.

Among JavaScript frameworks, WebAIM reports Astro at 9.0 errors per page, Next.js at 40.9 and React at 43.5, while Vue.js averaged 64.6 and AngularJS 76.6. By sector, government sites averaged 42.4 errors and shopping sites 71.0. By domain, .gov home pages averaged just 18.5.

What this means for you

The platform matters less than the theme and the content. A Shopify store is not doomed, and a WordPress site is not safe. But online stores carry the most errors and, as the next section shows, attract the most lawsuits. If you sell online, test your product, cart and checkout pages first.

How many website accessibility lawsuits are filed?

Plaintiffs filed 3,117 website accessibility lawsuits in US federal court in 2025, up 27% from 2,452 in 2024, according to Seyfarth Shaw. Counts that include state courts are much higher. UsableNet reviewed "more than 5,000" digital accessibility suits in federal and state courts in 2025, and EcomBack counted 3,948.

Seyfarth's count shows website suits made up 36% of all federal ADA Title III cases in 2025 (3,117 of 8,667), up from 28% in 2024. The busiest courts were in New York (1,021 suits), Florida (961) and Illinois (585). California federal courts had only four, because most California claims go to state court.

Why the counts disagree

The main gap is state court cases, which are harder to count. None of these numbers includes demand letters that settle before a suit is filed. UsableNet and EcomBack both sell accessibility services, and Seyfarth is a law firm that defends these cases, so all three have a view. Their numbers still point the same way.

2026 so far

Filings are rising again in 2026. Seyfarth's mid-year report (September 9, 2026) counted 5,006 federal ADA Title III suits of all kinds in the first half of 2026, up 9% on the first half of 2025. That total includes physical access cases; Seyfarth did not give a separate website figure for the half year. UsableNet's 2026 midyear report page says digital accessibility lawsuits "are projected to exceed 6,000 filings in 2026." That is a projection, not a count. Its monthly tracker reports 360 new suits in September 2026 alone.

Who gets sued

• Small companies. UsableNet's 2025 report puts 64% of sued companies under $25 million in annual revenue.
• Online stores. 70% of the suits in UsableNet's 2025 report were against ecommerce companies, and 21% against food service.
• Repeat defendants. "1,427 ADA digital accessibility lawsuits targeted companies that had already been sued, accounting for 45% of all federal cases" in 2025, per UsableNet. A settlement does not end the risk if the site stays broken.
• A few law firms. UsableNet's July 2026 trends post says the 10 most active plaintiff firms account for "approximately 84 percent of filings." EcomBack found 16 firms filed 90.35% of the suits it counted in 2025.

What this means for you

Size does not protect you, and selling online raises your exposure. The suits are filed by a small number of firms that look for easy, scannable failures, which are exactly the common errors listed above. Fixing those errors will not make you lawsuit-proof, but it removes the easy targets. Our guide to ADA website lawsuits for small business covers the law, the courts and a fix order.

Do accessibility overlays and widgets stop lawsuits?

No. Sites with overlay widgets are sued regularly. UsableNet's July 2026 trends post says "approximately 20 percent of the companies sued had an accessibility widget or overlay installed." EcomBack counted 983 suits in 2025 (24.90%) against websites using accessibility widgets, up from 722 (22.65%) in 2024. UsableNet's tracker reports that in September 2026, 91 defendants "were sued despite using a third-party accessibility widget."

Regulators have also acted on overlay marketing. In January 2025 the Federal Trade Commission announced an order requiring accessiBe "to pay $1 million to settle allegations" about claims that its accessWidget product could make any website WCAG compliant. The FTC alleged the tool "did not make all user websites WCAG-compliant." The final order was approved on April 22, 2025.

What this means for you

Do not buy a widget instead of fixing the site. The money is better spent on fixing the templates where the errors live.

How many people have a disability?

More than one in four US adults has some type of disability, according to the CDC. Its 2022 survey data puts the figure at 28.7% of adults reporting a functional disability, and 43.9% of people aged 65 and over (CDC, 2025).

The US Census Bureau gives a lower figure because it measures differently: 45.8 million people, or 13.7% of the civilian noninstitutionalized population, from the 2024 American Community Survey. The CDC itself notes the gap comes from "differences in data collection methods." The CDC figure covers adults only and asks about more types of difficulty; the Census figure covers all ages. Worldwide, the World Health Organization estimates 1.3 billion people, or 16% of the population, "experience significant disability."

The right column is our summary of common barriers, not CDC data.

What this means for you

This is a customer issue before it is a legal one. Even the lower Census figure means tens of millions of potential customers, and the share rises with age. Older customers often have money to spend and less patience for a site that fights them.

What do screen reader users report?

Screen reader users mostly browse on phones, and many say the web is getting worse. WebAIM's Screen Reader User Survey #11, run in July and August 2026 with 1,780 valid responses, found 91.8% use a screen reader on a mobile device. iOS was the primary mobile platform for 73.3%.

• Desktop screen readers. JAWS was the primary screen reader for 55.0% and NVDA for 32.9%. In North America, JAWS led NVDA 72.5% to 15.6%.
• Getting worse. 22.9% said web content "has become less accessible", up from 18.6% in 2024.
• Documents. 85.6% said PDF documents are very or somewhat likely to cause accessibility issues, up from 75.1% in 2019.
• Headings. 67.8% use headings first to find information on a page, which is why heading structure matters.

The previous survey #10 (December 2023 to January 2024) ranked the most problematic items. CAPTCHA came first "by a notable margin", followed by menus, tabs and dialogs that do not behave as expected, then links or buttons that do not make sense. It also found that 67% of respondents "never or rarely contact web site owners about barriers."

What this means for you

Most people who hit a barrier on your site will not tell you. They leave. Test your site on an iPhone with VoiceOver, check that your CAPTCHA has an accessible option, and make sure every button says what it does.

How much can automated testing find?

Automated tools find a large share of issues but not all of them. A 2021 Deque study of more than 2,000 audits found automated testing identified 57% of issues by volume. That is vendor data from 2021, from a company that sells automated tools, so treat it as an upper estimate for what a scanner can catch. WebAIM makes the same point from the other side: its 95.9% is only the failures it could detect.

Our own accessibility checker has limits too. It reads the HTML your server sends, so it checks things like missing alt text, form labels, page language, empty buttons and headings. It does not run JavaScript and does not measure colour contrast. A clean scan is a good start, not proof of conformance.

What this means for you

Use a scanner to find the easy failures fast. Then test the important journeys by hand: keyboard only, a screen reader, and zoom to 200%. That combination is what an audit is.

How are organizations responding?

Most organizations now face pressure from buyers as well as courts. In Level Access's eighth State of Digital Accessibility report (executive summary dated September 2026), a survey of more than 2,500 digital professionals in the US and Europe, 72% of US organizations said they faced accessibility-related legal or regulatory action in the past year, up from 53% in 2025. 83% said they now require proof of accessibility most or all of the time when buying digital products, up from 75%. This is survey data from a vendor, not a count of cases.

Public bodies have firm dates. Under the ADA Title II rule, state and local governments with 50,000 or more people must meet WCAG 2.1 AA by April 26, 2027, and smaller ones by April 26, 2028, after an April 20, 2026 extension. See our ADA Title II guide for detail. If you sell into Europe, the European Accessibility Act applies too, and Canada has the Accessible Canada Act.

What this means for you

If you sell software or services to governments, schools or larger companies, accessibility is now a sales requirement. Expect to be asked for an accessibility conformance report in procurement.

How we compiled this

We opened and checked every source on October 23, 2026. Our rules:

• Primary sources only. WebAIM, the CDC, the Census Bureau, the WHO, the FTC, the Federal Register, and the lawsuit reports published by Seyfarth Shaw, UsableNet and EcomBack. Survey data from Level Access and Deque is labelled as vendor data.
• We left out figures we could not open. Some lawsuit numbers circulate online without a working source page. We did not use them. UsableNet's full 2026 midyear PDF is behind a form, so we used only the figures on its public pages.
• One figure we did not use. UsableNet's 2026 midyear blog repeats a revenue split (36% over $25 million, up from 33% and 27%) that is word for word the same as its first-half 2025 figure. We could not tell which period it describes, so we used the 2025 year-end figure instead.
• Federal versus state. Lawsuit counts differ by source. We give each count with what it covers.
• Not legal advice. These are statistics for planning. If you have received a demand letter, speak to a lawyer.

We will update this page when the WebAIM Million 2027 report and the year-end 2026 lawsuit reports are published.

What to do with these numbers

Start with a scan, fix the common errors in your templates, and then test by hand. A short checklist:

• Scan your home page and your busiest pages with our free accessibility checker.
• Fix text contrast, alt text, form labels and empty buttons in the shared templates first.
• Tab through your contact form and checkout with a keyboard only.
• Test the same pages on a phone with VoiceOver or TalkBack.
• Remove any overlay widget you bought as a fix, and fix the real issues instead.
• Publish an accessibility statement with a working contact route.
• Build any new pages to WCAG 2.2 AA from the start.

Our guide to website accessibility audit cost explains what an audit includes and how to budget for it. On our price sheet, building or remediating a site to WCAG 2.2 AA is an add-on of $500 to $2,000, depending on size. The free website cost calculator includes it as an option. For the speed side of how people experience your site, see our website speed statistics for 2026.