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I put the same page into two checkers. One says “needs review.” The other says “fail.” If your team has used more than one automated accessibility checker, you’ve probably seen this. So which one is right? I decided to answer that with numbers. The 37 accessibility test rules that W3C has approved come with 558 approved examples, each one labeled with the correct answer: this HTML passes, this HTML fails. I ran them through axe-core and IBM Equal Access, one by one. Of the 430 cases both tools checked, 413 agreed on whether the example fails (407 if you count “cannot tell” as its own result). The 17 that split were mostly cases where one tool returned cannot tell, or where one tool failed code that ACT doesn’t consider a failure. ACT rules are the yardstick for this comparison. The format they’re written in, ACT Rules Format 1.1, became a W3C Recommendation, W3C’s name for an official web standard, in February 2026. ...

Not many people go back and recalculate the numbers in a report. I didn’t either. When I wrote up the WebAIM Million 2026 report this past July, I copied one line straight into the post: “average of 1,437 elements per home page, up 22.5% in a single year.” Then, while researching a follow-up post, I looked up last year’s figure: 1,257. Going from 1,257 to 1,437 is 14.3%, not 22.5%. I asked WebAIM, and they confirmed it was a calculation error and corrected the original text. ...

A green toast reading “Saved” pops up in the bottom-right corner of the screen. It disappears two seconds later. For someone using a mouse, that’s complete feedback. But for someone who isn’t looking at the screen? That toast never happened. There’s no way to know whether the save succeeded or not. This is exactly what live regions exist to solve. Mark a region ahead of time as one whose content can change without a page refresh, and when the text inside it changes, the screen reader reads it out automatically. One line — aria-live="polite" — is all it takes. ...

↻ 2026-09-23 Updated The report’s “+22.5% elements in a single year” isn’t what you get from last year’s 1,257, so I asked WebAIM. They confirmed a calculation error and corrected the report to +14.3% (1,257 → 1,437 elements) in a reply on September 21; this post, first published on July 28, is updated to match. The 22.5% matches the two-year change since 2024 exactly. At 14.3% it is still the largest one-year jump since the study began, so the conclusions stand. What happens when you run one million home pages through an automated accessibility checker? ...

This is Part 15 of the “Frontend Testing, Done Right” series. Browse the full series · Glossary Whether a button has a name, you can tell by looking at that button. But whether its text contrasts enough with the background, whether the page declares a language, whether an id is duplicated — you can’t tell from one element. You have to look at the whole screen, and at the state it’s actually rendered in. That’s tiring to do by eye every time, which is exactly why you want an automated checking engine. ...

↻ 2026-08-12 Updated Corrected the legal basis of Korea’s quality certification. With the Digital Inclusion Act taking effect on January 22, 2026, Article 47 of the Framework Act on Intelligent Informatization was repealed and the certification scheme moved to Articles 21–22 of the Digital Inclusion Act — this post had been citing the old provision. The body, FAQ, and comparison diagram are updated together. “Can we actually say our service is accessible?” ...

I had clearly written a dark gray into my CSS. color: #595959. On a white background that color has a contrast of 6.4:1, which comfortably clears the accessibility bar of 4.5:1. Pass. Then I ran an accessibility checker, and a red line appeared. This text has a contrast of 4.04:1, which is insufficient. Expected ratio: 4.5:1. I put in a color that measures 6.4:1, so why is it calling it 4:1? Was the checker wrong? ...

Imagine scoring 71 on a test. Not quite “well done,” but surely enough to say “you tried,” right? Carrefour, one of France’s largest retailers, seems to have thought so too. In court, the company argued: “Our website complies with 71% of the French accessibility standard.” The court’s answer was blunt. “An e-commerce site cannot be only somewhat accessible; it must be totally accessible.” On June 4, 2026, the judicial court of Caen, France, ordered Carrefour to make its website and mobile app fully accessible within six months. Miss the deadline, and a penalty of 500 euros accrues every single day. It’s the first enforcement ruling to come out of the European Accessibility Act (EAA) regime. ...

May is a special month in Korea — packed with occasions to reach out to the people we love. Children’s Day (May 5), Parents’ Day (May 8), Teachers’ Day (May 15), Couples’ Day (May 21)… it’s no accident the whole month is called Family Month. Flower shops overflow with carnations, and KakaoTalk fills up with heartfelt digital cards. Sending a digital greeting card has become second nature. But I want to ask a simple question. ...

This post is part of an ongoing effort to monitor public websites as a web accessibility professional. It is written with the goal of improving information accessibility and advancing technology — not as a political statement. I only recently found out the Cheong Wa Dae website had been redesigned. Life gets busy, and I was a bit late to the news — but as soon as I heard, I was curious enough to check it out. ...