--- title: "Web Design Agency Accessibility: 93.7% Fail a Check" url: https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/web-design-agency-website-accessibility description: "Our web design agency accessibility study found 93.7% of agency homepages fail at least one automated check, and 45.3% score below 90. See the data." lang: en --- Share Share on X: https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.suffdigital.com%2Fresources%2Fdata-studies%2Fweb-design-agency-website-accessibility&text=93.7%25%20of%20Web%20Design%20Agencies%27%20Own%20Websites%20Fail%20at%20Least%20One%20Accessibility%20Check Share on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.suffdigital.com%2Fresources%2Fdata-studies%2Fweb-design-agency-website-accessibility Share on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.suffdigital.com%2Fresources%2Fdata-studies%2Fweb-design-agency-website-accessibility Share on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.suffdigital.com%2Fresources%2Fdata-studies%2Fweb-design-agency-website-accessibility&title=93.7%25%20of%20Web%20Design%20Agencies%27%20Own%20Websites%20Fail%20at%20Least%20One%20Accessibility%20Check **93.7%** of US web design and marketing agency homepages fail at least one of Google's automated accessibility checks, and 45.3% score below 90 out of 100, the line Google treats as a pass. The most common failure, text too faint to read against its background, shows up on 57.1% of agency homepages. Analysis of 333 US web design and marketing agency homepages · Google Lighthouse accessibility scores, September 2026 ## Key Findings 1. 1. **93.7%** of web design and marketing agency homepages fail at least one automated accessibility check, and the average agency homepage fails 3. Copy stat 2. 2. **45.3%** of web design agency homepages score below 90 out of 100 on Google's accessibility score, the line Google treats as a pass. Copy stat 3. 3. Text too faint to read against its background is the most common failure, on **57.1%** of web design agency homepages, followed by links with no readable name on 45.3%. Copy stat 4. 4. **6.3%** of web design agency homepages score a perfect 100 on accessibility, 21 agencies in all. Copy stat 5. 5. **58.9%** of web design agency homepages score below 50 out of 100 on Google's mobile speed score, with a median of 42. Copy stat ## Summary A business owner shortlists three web design agencies and opens each one's homepage to judge its work. What she does not see is how those pages behave for a visitor who is blind, has low vision or navigates by keyboard. A screen reader stumbles over icon links with no names, and grey text on a white background fades out for anyone with weaker eyesight. Accessibility is the practice of building sites that people with disabilities can use: text they can read, links and buttons a screen reader can name, and pages that work without a mouse. Agencies are the businesses that build websites for everyone else, so their own homepages are the clearest sign of whether they build accessibility in by default. A buyer should not assume it is part of the package. **93.7%** of agency homepages fail at least one of Google's automated accessibility checks, and the average homepage fails 3. 45.3% score below 90 out of 100, the line Google treats as a pass, and 6.3% score a perfect 100. The failures are basic and fixable: faint text, unnamed links and headings out of order. ## What we measured On September 23, 2026 we ran Google Lighthouse, the free site test built into the Chrome browser, on the homepages of 333 US web design and marketing agencies listed on Google Business Profiles under "website designer" and "marketing agency". We used the mobile test, which scores a page as a phone visitor would load it, and recorded each homepage's four scores: accessibility, performance (speed), SEO and best practices. Each score runs from 0 to 100, and Google treats 90 or above as good. The accessibility score is built from dozens of individual checks, such as whether text has enough contrast and whether every link has a name a screen reader can read. A homepage fails a check when it does not pass it; the median is the middle homepage, with half scoring higher and half lower. ## Almost every agency homepage fails an accessibility check 93.7% of web design and marketing agency homepages fail at least one automated accessibility check. 312 of the 333 agency homepages fail at least one check, and the average agency homepage fails 3. Failures cluster: 22.2% of agency homepages fail five or more checks, which points to several separate problems on the same page rather than one slip. These are automated checks, the kind any agency can run in a minute from its own browser. That is what makes the result telling. A failure here is not a subtle judgment call that needs an expert; it is a warning Google shows to anyone who runs the test. ## Faint text and unnamed links are the most common failures Low color contrast, text too faint to read against its background, is the most common failure, on 57.1% of agency homepages. Light grey text on white and white text over photos are the usual causes, and they are design choices: an agency picks them for looks. Links with no readable name come second, on 45.3%. An icon link with no text, such as a social media icon, reads out as "link" with no destination, and the screen reader user is left guessing where it goes. Share of agency homepages by failed accessibility check Text too faint against its background (color contrast) 57.1% Links with no readable name 45.3% Headings out of order 44.4% No main content area marked 38.7% Tap targets too small or too close together 17.4% Images with no alt text 15% Zooming blocked on phones 14.4% Buttons with no readable name 11.1% Embedded frames with no title 7.2% No page language set 6.9% Links marked by color alone 6% Lists coded incorrectly 4.5% Source: Suff Digital analysis of 333 US web design and marketing agency homepages · Google Lighthouse accessibility scores, September 2026 Headings out of order, on 44.4% of agency homepages, means a page jumps from a main heading to a sub-sub-heading, which breaks the outline screen reader users rely on to skim a page. On 38.7%, the page does not mark where its main content begins, so a keyboard or screen reader user has to move through the whole menu every time. Missing image descriptions, the best-known accessibility issue, are comparatively rare on agency sites at 15%. ## Half of agency homepages sit at or below the pass line The median agency accessibility score is 90, exactly on the pass line. 48.3% of agency homepages score between 90 and 99, and 30.6% land between 80 and 89, close but short. At the extremes, 21 agencies, 6.3%, score a perfect 100, and 14, 4.2%, score below 70. Share of agency homepages by accessibility score 100 6.3% 90 to 99 48.3% 80 to 89 30.6% 70 to 79 10.5% Below 70 4.2% A score of 90 or above is not the same as an accessible site: 93.7% fail at least one check, so most of the homepages above the line still carry a known issue. The score tells you how many problems a page has; the list of failed checks tells you which ones, and that list is what an agency should be able to show you. ## Agency homepages are slow on phones too Speed scores are weaker still. The median agency homepage scores 42 out of 100 on Google's mobile performance score, 58.9% score below 50, and 4.8% reach 90 or above. A slow homepage on a phone loses visitors before they see any of the work it was built to show. Agencies do better on the scores that are easiest to meet. The median SEO score is 92, though 29.7% of agency homepages still fall below 90, and the median best practices score is 96, the highest of the four. ## What this means for businesses hiring a web design agency Before you sign, test the agency's own homepage and two or three client sites from its portfolio. Open each page in Chrome, right-click, choose Inspect, then Lighthouse, and run the test for mobile. It is free and takes about a minute. An agency whose own site scores 90 or above, and fails few individual checks, is more likely to deliver that standard for you. Then put the standard in the contract. Ask for a Lighthouse accessibility score of 90 or higher on key pages at launch, no failed contrast or link-name checks, and a mobile performance target. Ask how the agency tests with a keyboard and a screen reader, since automated checks catch only part of what matters to disabled visitors. If the agency cannot answer, bring in someone who can check the work independently. A website accessibility consultant (https://www.suffdigital.com/services/web-design/web-accessibility) can review a proposed design or a finished site against current accessibility standards and give you a fix list to hold the builder to. ## Embed this research Paste this on your site to embed the charts. It links back to the source automatically.

Source: 93.7% of Web Design Agencies' Own Websites Fail at Least One Accessibility Check - Suff Digital

## Cite this study APA Suff Digital. (2026). 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 Plain link 93.7% of Web Design Agencies' Own Websites Fail at Least One Accessibility Check - Suff Digital - https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/web-design-agency-website-accessibility ## Frequently asked questions ### Do web design agencies have accessible websites? ### What accessibility issue do agency websites fail most? ### How many agency websites score a perfect 100 on accessibility? ### How fast are web design agency websites? ## Related studies - Web Design 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 - 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 15.2% of the Top 500,000 Websites Skip the Page Language Tag Screen Readers Need: https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/website-template-basics - SEO Two Thirds of Website Homepages Fail at Least One Basic SEO Check: https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/websites-fail-basic-seo-checks ## 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/web-design-agency-website-accessibility#article", "headline": "93.7% of Web Design Agencies' Own Websites Fail at Least One Accessibility Check", "description": "93.7% of US web design and marketing agency homepages fail at least one of Google's automated accessibility checks, and 45.3% score below 90 out of 100, the line Google treats as a pass. 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The most common failure, text too faint to read against its background, shows up on 57.1% of agency homepages.", "url": "https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/web-design-agency-website-accessibility", "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": "Google Lighthouse (mobile) scores for agency homepages listed on Google Business Profiles under \"website designer\" and \"marketing agency\"" }, { "@type": "FAQPage", "@id": "https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/web-design-agency-website-accessibility#faq", "mainEntity": [ { "@type": "Question", "name": "Do web design agencies have accessible websites?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Not reliably. 93.7% of US web design and marketing agency homepages fail at least one automated accessibility check, and 45.3% score below 90 out of 100 on Google's accessibility score (September 2026)." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "What accessibility issue do agency websites fail most?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Low color contrast, text too faint to read against its background, which fails on 57.1% of web design agency homepages. Links with no readable name (45.3%) and headings out of order (44.4%) follow." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "How many agency websites score a perfect 100 on accessibility?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "6.3% of US web design and marketing agency homepages, 21 agencies, score a perfect 100 on Google's accessibility score. The median agency homepage scores 90." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "How fast are web design agency websites?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "The median web design agency homepage scores 42 out of 100 on Google's mobile performance score, and 58.9% of agency homepages score below 50." } } ] } ] } ] ```