Web Accessibility Coverage Report 2025

WCAG coverage for real-world web accessibility testing

State of web accessibility testing

Web accessibility ensures that digital content, applications, and tools are inclusive and cater to users with disabilities such as visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive impairments.

Web accessibility testing encompasses design and development practices that address barriers preventing people with disabilities from accessing content or functionality. Key aspects include:

• Making text readable and distinguishable.
• Ensuring interactive elements like buttons and forms are usable via keyboards.
• Providing alternatives, such as captions for videos or text descriptions for images.
• Making digital content easily navigable via screen readers.

Web accessibility testing is increasingly gaining popularity as businesses need to:

• Ensure legal compliance with strict web accessibility regulations, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the U.S. and the European Accessibility Act (EAA) in Europe.
• Expand market reach and enhance user experience for over 1 billion people with disabilities. Accessible websites are usable for everyone, including individuals with temporary impairments (e.g., an injury) and situational limitations (e.g., bright sunlight).
• Build an inclusive brand that offers equal opportunity. This helps strengthen brand identity, fosters trust, and reinforces a positive brand image.

WCAG: North Star for accessibility compliance

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) & Success Criteria

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) developed the widely accepted WCAG to help web designers and developers make web content accessible. WCAG defines success criteria as specific, testable standards that help ensure web content is accessible to people with disabilities. These criteria are categorized based on four principles:

• Perceivable: This involves making information accessible to users with different senses. For example, adding captions to videos, providing transcripts for audio, using alternative text for images, and using color contrast that’s easy to see.
• Operable: This involves making sure everyone can use a website, including people with disabilities. For example, ensuring a website is navigable via keyboard or voice control.
• Understandable: This includes making sure the content is clear and easy to follow. For instance, you can achieve this by using easy-to-see colors, simple language, clear instructions, and error messages.
• Robust: Ensuring that web content remains accessible across different technologies, including various browsers, screen readers, and assistive devices. For instance, use ARIA attributes where necessary, and continually test for compatibility across a range of browsers, devices, and assistive technologies.

While most legal compliance for accessibility targets is at the WCAG 2.1 AA level, WCAG has three levels of conformance to address varying levels of accessibility requirements:

• Level A defines the minimum accessibility requirements that must be met.
• Level AA addresses major accessibility barriers for most users.
• Level AAA defines the highest and most complex level of accessibility, addressing specific and advanced needs.

Scope of research study

BrowserStack conducted an in-depth accessibility audit across 1,000 web pages to identify the most common WCAG issues impacting web accessibility.

Research study inclusions:

• 1,000 webpages were assessed against the latest standards of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, Conformance Level AA.
• These 1,000 web pages spanned various industries—from travel and leisure to public and social services. It was important to have a wide range of people in our sample to ensure the results reflected accessibility issues across different domains and user groups.
• Our evaluation was led by a team of accessibility experts and individuals with disabilities, utilizing a combination of assistive technologies, manual audits, and testing tools for comprehensive testing.
• Alongside the time required for the detection of WCAG conformance issues, we also looked at the frequency at which Success Criteria issues occur.

Research constraints and limitations:

The scope of our evaluation was restricted to web content. Apps and PDFs were not included in this evaluation. Some success criteria were not tested as part of this research study, as explained below:

• We analyzed individual web pages for a domain rather than entire websites. Due to this, certain Success Criteria (like 3.2.3 Consistent Navigation, 3.2.4 Consistent Identification, and 3.2.6 Consistent Help) pertaining to multiple pages were not applicable.
• Our sample set did not include login and signup pages, making Success Criterion 3.3.8 (Accessible Authentication) inapplicable.
• Focus Appearance (Success Criteria 2.4.13) from WCAG 2.2 was often found, but since it is a Level AAA criterion, it wasn’t included in our main analysis.

Research Study Results

Upon auditing 1000 web pages, we found a total of 41,947 accessibility issues. The table below lists the top 15 success criteria with the most accessibility issues and the percentage of issues for each success criterion:

Notable findings from the research study

#1 97% of WCAG issues can be attributed to 15 success criteria

Insights into how issues are distributed across the top 15 success criteria:

• Poor text-background contrast is a widespread issue, as success criterion 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) is the most frequently occurring accessibility violation.
• Many custom-built UI components lack proper Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) attributes, as success criterion 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value accounts for a large portion of errors.
• Many websites fail to provide adequate keyboard navigation and interaction capabilities for essential functions as success criterion 2.1.1 Keyboard is a prevalent issue.
• Many modern websites struggle with adaptability at higher resolutions and zoom levels. Success criteria 1.4.10 Reflow and 1.4.4 Resize Text account for issues mainly due to overlooked zoom considerations.
• Sequential navigation and logical content flow are still problems due to incorrect focus order, causing problems under success criteria 1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence and 2.4.3 Focus Order.
• The most common success criterion in the new WCAG 2.2 AA guidelines is 2.5.8 Target Size (Minimum). This indicates that interactive elements on webpages are not the appropriate size for individuals who struggle with dexterity.

#2 Some success criteria are time- and effort-intensive to detect manually

Among the identified issues, we found varying time requirements for manual detection:

• Minimal Time Required: SC 2.4.2 – Page Titled requires an average of 30 seconds per page for title checks.
• Moderate Time Required: SC 1.4.4 – Resize Text requires 5-10 minutes as it involves testing various text elements for truncation and layout issues.
• Significant Time Required: SC 3.2.4 – Consistent Identification may take considerable time as it involves detailed note-taking and evaluation across multiple pages.

#3 Issues of WCAG 2.0 Level A success criteria occur more frequently

In the research study based on frequency, we found that WCAG 2.0 criteria account for the highest number of issues, followed by WCAG 2.2 and WCAG 2.1:

• 93.8% of accessibility issues pertained to Success Criteria introduced in WCAG 2.0.
• 3% of issues were attributed to WCAG 2.2.
• 3.2% of the issues pertained to criteria introduced in WCAG 2.1.

#4 Less frequent issues are also time intensive to detect

Approximately 3% of success criteria issues are less frequent but require significant time to detect. Examples include:

• 3.2.3 Consistent Navigation: Ensures consistent navigational mechanisms across web pages.
• 2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured: Ensures that focusable components are not obscured by other content.

How automation is changing accessibility testing

By adopting automated accessibility testing, teams can save thousands of hours that a QA or auditor would spend to manually detect issues. For example, the BrowserStack Accessibility Testing Suite can automatically detect 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) issues.

Summary

While businesses focus on reducing compliance risk with accessibility testing, it is equally important to focus on real-world WCAG coverage. To ensure real-world WCAG coverage, businesses can take a two-fold approach:

• Ensure website accessibility for users by addressing top success criteria issues based on their volume.
• Identify and address infrequent yet high-impact accessibility barriers to avert loss of potential business opportunities from the disabled community.