Accessibility, especially on the web but also elsewhere, is a complicated combination of people with different roles working together. At any point during the creation of a web page, a blog post, its design, sourcing of images, or writing, issues can creep in.

As accessibility people, we often look at the end product and say “this is not accessible” (often meaning “this does not meet the minimum standards set out by WCAG”). And yes, it is always difficult to make everything 100% correct. Nobody’s perfect, and we have to make sure that perfect is not standing in the way of progress.¹

People love to claim that “accessibility failed”² but Léonie Watson describes plenty of interactions that would not have been possible a couple of decades ago. These advantages did not all arrive at once. It’s step by step improving accessibility.

The same goes for making the physical world more accessible: Curb cuts are essential for people using mobility devices, be that wheelchairs or walkers, to get around efficiently. Of course, you might say, we should have started with curb cuts earlier, and we should have accelerated the implementation of curb cuts. And I agree in principle. But there are always other constraints, in this case (and many others), it’s all about the money. Still, there is no denying that cities are more accessible due to the curb cuts.

For accessibility, we like to look to the WebAIM Million survey report. It says, “96.3% of home pages had detected WCAG 2 failures!” This sounds like a lot, but it is also like asking, “How many cities have all their curbs cut?” I’m pretty sure that percentage is lower than that of accessible home pages.

This is where the binary pass/fail of WCAG as a whole can’t convey the nuance that is needed in the conversation. Let’s look at the top 6 issues and see if we can see a positive or negative trend (change in percentage points):

• Low contrast text
  • 2019: 85.3%
  • 2023: 83.6%
  • Change: –1.7%
• Missing alternative text
  • 2019: 68%
  • 2023: 58.2%
  • Change: –9.8%
• Empty links
  • 2019: 58.1%
  • 2023: 50.1%
  • Change: –8%
• Missing form input labels
  • 2019: 52.8%
  • 2023: 45.9%
  • Change: –6.9%
• Empty buttons
  • 2019: 25%
  • 2023: 27.5%
  • Change: +2.5%
• Missing document language
  • 2019: 33.1%
  • 2023: 18.6%
  • Change: -14.5%

These are genuinely great numbers in terms of progress, especially as these issues make it impossible for some to not use affected websites at all. And even then, this says nothing about the severity of the issues because where they can have a major impact on the accessibility of a page: If links in the main navigation are empty, the impact is much higher than when social media links in the footer are empty.

Sweeping statements that accessibility “has failed” are often misguided. Improving 10 percentage points of accessibility errors in a category in four years is good. It’s trending in the right direction. Of course, there are still a lot of issues, but that is to be expected. I’m excited to see the details of the 2025 survey. (But really, developers, we have to talk about empty links and buttons, you can do better!)

That is also only the technical side of things: There are laws, like the European Accessibility Act, that are coming in effect which hopefully accelerate the adoption of good practices. I work with several high-profile clients, and there is a lot of work happening behind the scenes to make the deadline. Try a website or online shop that was inaccessible to you a year ago, it might have improved in the meantime.

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I'm a web accessibility professional who cares deeply about inclusion and an open web for everyone. I work with Axess Lab as an accessibility specialist. Previously, I worked with Knowbility, the World Wide Web Consortium, and Aktion Mensch. In this blog I publish my own thoughts and research about the web industry.

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And some of the machine learning also improves steadily. That podcasts now come with transcripts by default when using Apple Podcasts is a great change (even if they won’t be perfect in many circumstances). But I think even more important is that podcasters who can provide their own, better, transcripts, now have a documented way to do so that could show up in other podcatchers as well.

It’s not all doom and gloom as it might seem (although it is always totally OK to feel that way) and we have to acknowledge the progress we make every day.