The WebAIM Million: What Changed from 2024 to 2025?

Each year, WebAIM scans one million website home pages to assess how accessible they are to people with disabilities. The 2025 report is in, and while there are signs of progress, the internet is still far from accessible to all.

The full report is pretty long, so I used ChatGPT—fact-checking everything along the way—to compare the 2024 and 2025 editions. I pulled out the main takeaways and wrapped them up in this quick summary. Here’s what you need to know.

Key takeaways

Accessibility is improving—slowly. 94.8% of pages had detectable WCAG 2 failures in 2025, down slightly from 95.9% in 2024.
Fewer errors per page: Average dropped from 56.8 (2024) to 51 (2025).
Top 6 issues are still the same: Low contrast, missing alt text, missing labels, empty links/buttons, and missing language.
Alt text got a little better: 18.5% of images lacked alt text in 2025, down from 21.6% in 2024.
ARIA use is up, but so are problems. Pages using ARIA averaged twice as many errors.
Skip links are still rare: Just 13.7% of pages included one in 2025.
Government and finance sites lead in accessibility. E-commerce lags behind.

Take action: Fixing just a few common issues could vastly improve accessibility across the web.

A gentle dip in errors

Let’s start with some good news. In 2025:

Only 94.8% of pages had WCAG failures (yes, “only”).
That’s down from 95.9% in 2024.

It’s a modest drop, but it breaks a trend of stagnation. The average number of errors per page also dipped from 56.8 to 51, reversing a spike seen in 2024.

Bottom line: The web is inching in the right direction.

The top 6 accessibility issues have not changed

These six issues made up 96% of all detected errors in both years:

Low Contrast Text (on 79.1% of pages)
Missing Image Alt Text (56.5% of pages)
Missing Form Labels (48.2% of pages)
Empty Links (45.4% of pages)
Empty Buttons (29.6% of pages)
Missing Document Language (15.8% of pages)

They’re simple to fix—and they matter.

Quick wins

Use accessible color palettes (here are some tips).
Write descriptive alt text for images (using this simple recipe).
Add visible labels to all form fields.
Ensure all buttons and links say what they do.
Add a lang attribute to your <html> tag.

Alt text: getting better, still not great

Web pages keep getting more visual:

Average images per page: 58.6 in 2025 (up from 55.6 in 2024)
Missing alt text: Down to 18.5% of images in 2025 (was 21.6% in 2024)

That’s a decent improvement—but it still means over 1 in 6 images have no description.

Remember to use alt="" for decorative images, and make sure informative images describe their content in context.

ARIA: more !== better

ARIA attributes are almost everywhere:

79.4% of pages used ARIA in 2025 (up from 74.6%)
Pages with ARIA had twice as many errors as those without it

This doesn’t mean ARIA is bad—but it does mean it’s often misused.

Remember, “The first rule of ARIA is: don’t use ARIA.” Only add ARIA when native HTML won’t do the job.

Heading hierarchy: still a mess

Pages with skipped heading levels: 39% (2025) — up slightly from 37.9% (2024)
Pages with no headings at all: Improved to 9.8% in 2025 (down from 11.3%)
Pages with multiple <h1> elements (which should be avoided): 16.3%

Use clear, consistent heading levels. Avoid skipping from <h2> to <h4>.

Skip links: rare and often broken

Only 13.7% of pages had a “Skip to Content” link in 2025, up slightly from 13.3% in 2024.

Worse, 10% of skip links didn’t work—either they were hidden from keyboard users or targeted the wrong spot.

Add one line to your HTML:

<a href="#maincontent" class="skip-link">Skip to main content</a>

Then make sure the maincontent target element exists and is focusable. Here are some tips on troubleshooting skip links.

Which kinds of website are doing better (and worse)?

Best categories (fewer errors):

Government (avg. 37.2 errors/page)
Personal Finance (~37.7)
Non-Profit/Charity (~40)

These sites likely perform better due to legal requirements and public scrutiny.

Worst Categories (more errors):

Shopping/E-commerce (~71 errors/page)
Sports (~66)
Fashion, Real Estate, News also underperform

If you’re in one of these industries, improving accessibility is a way to stand out from your competitors.

Complexity Keeps Rising

The average homepage in 2025 had:

1,257 elements (up 7.1% from 2024)
~51 errors per page (that’s 1 error every 24 elements)

More complexity = more chances to introduce barriers.

Simplicity is accessible. Avoid over-engineering components. Use semantic HTML whenever possible.

Final Thoughts: Fix the Easy Stuff First

The WebAIM Million shows steady (if slow) progress. But the message remains the same: most accessibility issues are easy to fix, if we actually fix them.

Focus your efforts

Label everything.
Fix contrast.
Clean up heading structure.
Add alt text.
Add a skip link and test it.
Use native HTML.

If you do just these things, you’ll leap ahead of most of the web.

Let’s aim to make 2026 the year more websites move from “mostly broken” to “meaningfully accessible.”