--- title: "Website Accessibility Statistics: 65.7% of Top Sites Fail" url: https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/small-business-website-accessibility-fail-rate description: "Website accessibility statistics: 65.7% of the 10,000 most visited websites fail Google's accessibility test, against 60.2% of small sites. See the data." lang: en --- Share Share on X: https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.suffdigital.com%2Fresources%2Fdata-studies%2Fsmall-business-website-accessibility-fail-rate&text=Popular%20Websites%20Fail%20Accessibility%20Checks%20More%20Often%20Than%20Small%20Sites%3A%2065.7%25%20vs%2060.2%25 Share on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.suffdigital.com%2Fresources%2Fdata-studies%2Fsmall-business-website-accessibility-fail-rate Share on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.suffdigital.com%2Fresources%2Fdata-studies%2Fsmall-business-website-accessibility-fail-rate Share on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.suffdigital.com%2Fresources%2Fdata-studies%2Fsmall-business-website-accessibility-fail-rate&title=Popular%20Websites%20Fail%20Accessibility%20Checks%20More%20Often%20Than%20Small%20Sites%3A%2065.7%25%20vs%2060.2%25 The 10,000 most visited websites fail Google's automated accessibility test **65.7%** of the time, more often than small business websites at 60.2%. And 94.8% of all homepages fail at least one accessibility check. Analysis of 14,717,394 mobile homepages · the public HTTP Archive crawl and Google's Lighthouse test, September 2026 ## Key Findings 1. 1. **60.2%** of small business websites score below 90 on Google's accessibility test, the line the test treats as a pass. Copy stat 2. 2. The 10,000 most visited websites fail Google's accessibility test **65.7%** of the time, more often than small business websites at 60.2%. Copy stat 3. 3. Websites ranked between 10,000 and 1 million fail Google's accessibility test most often, at **67.7%**. Copy stat 4. 4. **94.8%** of website homepages fail at least one automated accessibility check, so about one in twenty scores a perfect 100. Copy stat 5. 5. Low color contrast is the most common accessibility failure, on **68.6%** of website homepages, more than twice the 26.2% with images missing alt text. Copy stat ## Summary A customer with low vision opens a local bakery's website on her phone to order a birthday cake. The menu text is pale gray on white, the photos have no descriptions for her screen reader, and the order form fields have no names. She gives up and calls a competitor, and the bakery never learns why. Website accessibility means building pages that people with disabilities can use: text dark enough to read, images described for screen readers, forms whose fields say what they want. The same fixes help everyone else too: darker text is easier to read on a phone in sunlight, and labeled forms are quicker to fill in. Big budgets do not buy accessibility by default. **65.7%** of the 10,000 most visited websites fail Google's accessibility test, against 60.2% of small business websites. Neither group does well: 94.8% of all homepages fail at least one automated check. ## What we measured We used the September 2026 HTTP Archive, a public dataset that tests millions of websites every month, and took every mobile homepage that had been through Google's Lighthouse accessibility test: 14,717,394 homepages. Lighthouse is Google's free website testing tool, built into the Chrome browser. Its accessibility test runs automated checks such as color contrast, image alt text, form labels and link names, and gives each page a score from 0 to 100. A score of 90 or more is a pass. We grouped homepages by popularity using Google's Chrome UX Report: the 10,000 most visited websites, websites ranked 10,000 to 1 million, and websites outside the top million, where most small and local business websites sit. For each group we counted homepages scoring below 90 and below 100, and averaged the score. ## The most visited websites fail more often than small ones 60.2% of small business websites score below 90 on Google's accessibility test. That runs against the assumption that big sites do better. The 10,000 most visited websites fail 65.7% of the time, and websites ranked between 10,000 and 1 million fail most often, at 67.7%. The average score tells the same story: small business websites average 84.8 out of 100, ahead of the top 10,000 at 83.2 and the middle group at 83. Score below 90 by site popularity Top 10,000 65.7% 10,000 to 1 million 67.7% Outside the top million 60.2% All homepages 60.5% Source: Suff Digital analysis of 14,717,394 mobile homepages · the public HTTP Archive crawl and Google's Lighthouse test, September 2026 | Site popularity | Homepages | Score below 90 | Score below 100 | Average score | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Top 10,000 | 6,910 | 65.7% | 93.5% | 83.2 | | 10,000 to 1 million | 732,913 | 67.7% | 95.2% | 83 | | Outside the top million | 13,977,571 | 60.2% | 94.8% | 84.8 | | All homepages | 14,717,394 | 60.5% | 94.8% | 84.7 | One likely factor is that busier websites carry more images, menus, pop-ups and third-party widgets, and every extra element is another chance to fail a check. A small business homepage with a logo, a few photos and a contact form has fewer places for problems to hide. That does not make small sites accessible: six in ten still fail. ## Almost no homepage passes every check 94.8% of website homepages fail at least one automated accessibility check. A score of 90 counts as a pass, but a page can score 90 and still have failures a visitor will hit. Only about one homepage in twenty clears every automated check and scores 100. The rate is almost identical in every group: 93.5% of the top 10,000 websites fail at least one check, 95.2% of websites ranked 10,000 to 1 million, and 94.8% of small business websites. Most of these failures repeat across every page, because they come from the site template: the same pale footer text, the same unlabeled search box, the same logo image with no description. Fixing the template once clears the problem on every page that uses it. ## Low color contrast is the most common failure 68.6% of website homepages have text with too little contrast against its background, making it the most common accessibility failure, more than twice as common as images with no alt text, the written description a screen reader reads aloud, at 26.2%. Contrast problems come from design choices such as light gray body text or white text on pale photos, so they are fixed in the colors a site uses, not by a plugin. Fail color contrast by site popularity Top 10,000 62.5% 10,000 to 1 million 64.6% Outside the top million 68.8% All homepages 68.6% On contrast, small business websites do worse than the most visited ones: 68.8% fail, against 62.5% of the top 10,000. A small business site usually takes its colors from a template, and nobody checks them against the contrast standard once the brand colors are dropped in. ## What this means for small business owners Run Google's Lighthouse test on your own homepage: open it in Chrome, right-click, choose Inspect and run the accessibility report. It takes under a minute. If you score below 90 you are in the majority, and the fixes behind most failures are small: darker text colors, alt text on images, labels on form fields and link text that says where the link goes. Do not assume your web designer or platform handled this; the most visited websites fail just as often. Ask for an accessibility check as part of any redesign, and test again after new content goes live. A website accessibility consultant (https://www.suffdigital.com/services/web-design/web-accessibility) can go beyond the automated test to check keyboard use and screen reader behavior, the problems machines cannot measure. ## Embed this research Paste this on your site to embed the charts. It links back to the source automatically.

Source: Popular Websites Fail Accessibility Checks More Often Than Small Sites: 65.7% vs 60.2% - Suff Digital

## Cite this study APA Suff Digital. (2026). Popular Websites Fail Accessibility Checks More Often Than Small Sites: 65.7% vs 60.2%. https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/small-business-website-accessibility-fail-rate Plain link Popular Websites Fail Accessibility Checks More Often Than Small Sites: 65.7% vs 60.2% - Suff Digital - https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/small-business-website-accessibility-fail-rate ## Frequently asked questions ### What percentage of small business websites fail accessibility checks? ### Do popular websites have better accessibility? ### What is the most common website accessibility failure? ### How many websites pass every accessibility check? ## Related studies - Web Design 68.6% of Website Homepages Have Text That Fails Color Contrast Standards: https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/website-color-contrast-failure-rate - Web Design 56.3% of Forms on the 10,000 Most Visited Websites Have No Labels vs 44.7% on Small Sites: https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/website-form-labels-missing-study - Web Design 93.7% of Web Design Agencies' Own Websites Fail at Least One Accessibility Check: https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/web-design-agency-website-accessibility - Web Design Websites on .us Domains Use Accessibility Overlays 18 Times as Often as German Sites: https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/accessibility-overlay-adoption-rate ## Structured data ```json [ { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "Organization", "@id": "https://www.suffdigital.com/#organization", "name": "Suff Digital", "alternateName": "Suff Digital Marketing", "url": "https://www.suffdigital.com/", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://www.suffdigital.com/#logo", "url": "https://www.suffdigital.com/logo.png", "contentUrl": "https://www.suffdigital.com/logo.png", "caption": "Suff Digital" }, "image": { "@id": "https://www.suffdigital.com/#logo" }, "description": "Suff Digital is a full-stack digital marketing agency that turns websites into predictable revenue engines, SEO, paid media, content, CRO, and web design built around revenue, not vanity metrics.", "slogan": "Digital marketing built for what's next.", "email": "hello@suffdigital.com", "telephone": "+1-629-236-0099", "foundingDate": "2022", "founder": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Matt Suffoletto", "jobTitle": "Founder & CEO" }, "contactPoint": [ { "@type": "ContactPoint", "telephone": "+1-629-236-0099", "email": "hello@suffdigital.com", "contactType": "sales", "areaServed": "US", "availableLanguage": [ "en" ] } ], "address": { "@type": "PostalAddress", "addressLocality": "Nashville", "addressRegion": "TN", "postalCode": "37219", "addressCountry": "US" }, "areaServed": { "@type": "Country", "name": "United States" }, "sameAs": [ "https://www.linkedin.com/company/suff-digital/", "https://www.instagram.com/suffdigital/", "https://www.youtube.com/@suffdigitalmarketing", "https://www.tiktok.com/@suffdigital" ], "knowsAbout": [ "Search Engine Optimization", "Pay-Per-Click Advertising", "Paid Social Advertising", "Conversion Rate Optimization", "Web Design", "Digital PR", "Link Building", "Website Migration", "Website Maintenance and Support", "Technical SEO", "Local SEO", "AI Search Optimization" ], "hasOfferCatalog": { "@type": "OfferCatalog", "name": "Suff Digital Services", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "Offer", "itemOffered": { "@type": "Service", "name": "Search Engine Optimization (SEO)", "url": "https://www.suffdigital.com/" } }, { "@type": "Offer", "itemOffered": { "@type": "Service", "name": "Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising", "url": "https://www.suffdigital.com/services/ppc" } }, { "@type": "Offer", "itemOffered": { "@type": "Service", "name": "Paid Social Advertising", "url": "https://www.suffdigital.com/services/paid-social" } }, { "@type": "Offer", "itemOffered": { "@type": "Service", "name": "Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)", "url": "https://www.suffdigital.com/services/cro" } }, { "@type": "Offer", "itemOffered": { "@type": "Service", "name": "Web Design", "url": "https://www.suffdigital.com/services/web-design" } }, { "@type": "Offer", "itemOffered": { "@type": "Service", "name": "Digital PR & Link Building", "url": "https://www.suffdigital.com/services/digital-pr" } }, { "@type": "Offer", "itemOffered": { "@type": "Service", "name": "Website Migration", "url": "https://www.suffdigital.com/services/website-migration" } }, { "@type": "Offer", "itemOffered": { "@type": "Service", "name": "Website Maintenance & Support", "url": "https://www.suffdigital.com/services/website-maintenance" } } ] } }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://www.suffdigital.com/#website", "url": "https://www.suffdigital.com/", "name": "Suff Digital", "inLanguage": "en-US", "publisher": { "@id": "https://www.suffdigital.com/#organization" } } ] }, { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "Article", "@id": "https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/small-business-website-accessibility-fail-rate#article", "headline": "Popular Websites Fail Accessibility Checks More Often Than Small Sites: 65.7% vs 60.2%", "description": "The 10,000 most visited websites fail Google's automated accessibility test 65.7% of the time, more often than small business websites at 60.2%. 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And 94.8% of all homepages fail at least one accessibility check.", "url": "https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/small-business-website-accessibility-fail-rate", "creator": { "@id": "https://www.suffdigital.com/#organization" }, "datePublished": "2026-09-24", "dateModified": "2026-09-24", "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/", "isAccessibleForFree": true, "measurementTechnique": "HTTP Archive September 2026 mobile crawl, with Google Lighthouse accessibility results; Google's Chrome UX Report for site popularity" }, { "@type": "FAQPage", "@id": "https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/small-business-website-accessibility-fail-rate#faq", "mainEntity": [ { "@type": "Question", "name": "What percentage of small business websites fail accessibility checks?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "60.2% of small business websites score below 90, the passing line, on Google's Lighthouse accessibility test (September 2026), and 94.8% fail at least one automated accessibility check." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "Do popular websites have better accessibility?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "No. The 10,000 most visited websites fail Google's accessibility test 65.7% of the time, more often than small business websites at 60.2%, and their average score is lower, 83.2 against 84.8." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "What is the most common website accessibility failure?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Low color contrast, found on 68.6% of website homepages, more than twice the 26.2% of homepages with images missing alt text." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "How many websites pass every accessibility check?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "About one in twenty. 94.8% of website homepages fail at least one automated accessibility check in Google's Lighthouse test." } } ] } ] } ] ```