Alexa 100 Accessibility Errors
Karl Groves recently published automated web accessibility test data for many of the Alexa Top 100 web sites. The results paint a rather stark picture of web accessibility. We agree with Karl’s suggestion that while automated testing is not a direct indicator of true accessibility issues, “poor performance in automated testing is strongly correlated with poor performance in manual testing.” Jennison commented that not all errors are created equally, and this is very true, yet the preponderance of automated errors is clearly indicative of serious issues.
The table below outlines errors for the home pages of the Alexa Top 100 US sites (excluding porn, content farm, and advertising sites). The WAVE toolbar was used to calculate errors. Because the WAVE toolbar evaluates content after JavaScript is processed, and because WAVE errors almost universally indicate a significant accessibility issue, the number of errors is generally a good indicator of true end user accessibility issues.
Site Data
Site Name
# of Errors
slickdeals.net
306
foxnews.com
220
nfl.com
107
usatoday.com
105
homedepot.com
90
cnn.com
89
latimes.com
67
answers.com
61
nytimes.com
58
capitalone.com
55
chase.com
51
kohls.com
51
hulu.com
50
go.com
44
pandora.com
44
washingtonpost.com
43
rr.com
39
coupons.com
35
swagbucks.com
33
att.com
30
toysrus.com
30
tmz.com
30
walmart.com
29
barnesandnoble.com
29
weather.com
28
constantcontact.com
28
about.com
26
match.com
26
flickr.com
25
reddit.com
24
ups.com
24
fedex.com
23
gap.com
22
salesforce.com
22
dailymail.co.uk
22
bbc.co.uk
21
drudgereport.com
21
imdb.com
20
cnet.com
20
imgur.com
19
foxsports.com
19
linkedin.com
18
espn.com
18
photobucket.com
18
cbssports.com
17
pof.com
17
godaddy.com
16
warriorforum.com
16
wsj.com
16
aol.com
15
sears.com
15
allrecipes.com
15
ebay.com
12
target.com
12
microsoft.com
11
ask.com
11
groupon.com
11
tumblr.com
10
myspace.com
10
yahoo.com
9
huffingtonpost.com
9
reference.com
9
facebook.com
8
youtube.com
8
wordpress.com
8
shopathome.com
8
google.com
6
amazon.com
6
bestbuy.com
6
newegg.com
6
stumbleupon.com
6
twitter.com
5
live.com
5
msn.com
5
usps.com
5
americanexpress.com
4
paypal.com
3
yelp.com
3
vimeo.com
3
craigslist.org
2
comcast.net
2
wellsfargo.com
2
pinterest.com
2
adobe.com
2
macys.com
2
verizonwireless.com
2
thepiratebay.org
2
indeed.com
2
wikipedia.org
1
netflix.com
1
bankofamerica.com
1
etsy.com
1
ehow.com
1
wordpress.org
1
jcpenney.com
1
mywebsearch.com
1
blogspot.com
0
bing.com
0
apple.com
0
pch.com
0
Conclusion
Care should be taken in interpreting these results. These data should not be used to cast a sweeping judgement on a site. Home pages are often dissimilar to content [...]