---
title: "A working website isn't the same as an accessible one"
date: 2026-08-01T00:00:00+08:00
author: Jessica Kaitse
canonical_url: "https://remedystudio.com.au/insights/a-working-website-isnt-the-same-as-an-accessible-one"
section: Insights Articles
---
August 01, 2026
For the first time in six years, website accessibility has gotten worse. If your website looks clean and works fine when you click through it yourself, there's a good chance you've assumed that means it works for everyone. It's a reasonable assumption, and right now it's likely wrong for the vast majority of sites online. Here's what you can do about it.
WebAIM's 2026 scan of the top one million homepages found at least one detectable accessibility failure on 95.9% of them, up from 94.8% the year before. That's the first year this number has got worse in six years of tracking, and the average page now carries 56.1 errors, up 10.1% on last year. Whatever you're picturing when you think "inaccessible website," this probably isn't it. Most of these are professional, functioning, perfectly normal-looking sites.
## Why did web accessibility get worse in 2026?
You'd assume more websites means more scrutiny, and more scrutiny means fewer mistakes slipping through, but hasn't worked that way.
Homepages are becoming more complex, and WebAIM points to a specific cause: growing page complexity and heavier reliance on automated and AI-assisted coding, alongside third-party frameworks and libraries doing more of the building than ever.
The same six problems have topped WebAIM's list for seven years running:
1. low contrast text on 83.9% of pages
2. missing alt text on more than half
3. unlabelled form fields on 51%
4. empty links on 46.3%
5. empty buttons on 30.6%
6. missing document language on 13.5%.
None of these need specialist knowledge to fix, and they're easy to skip when nobody's specifically checking for them, and the more code a page carries, the more places there are to miss one. It's a bit like a house getting extensions added faster than anyone's checking the wiring.
## Why AI tools can't catch every accessibility issue
AI created websites can look and behave so finished that we may safely assume all the details are handled, which is the trap.
Automated code generation is very good at producing a lot of markup quickly, but it's not (yet) built to ask whether a screen reader user can make sense of the page it just produced, or whether a particular form field genuinely needs a label versus being purely decorative. Those are judgment calls that depend on what the page is for, a nuance in context that AI doesn't yet have.
Building fast means that great tools get in the hands of people who need them quicker than before, but it also means that it needs someone to check the result once it exists, the same way any new tool benefits from someone who understands what they're looking at reviewing what it produced.
## Does accessible web design affect revenue?
Accessibility often comes into website projects as a responsibility toward inclusivity, but we now have data that shows it can also help improve website revenue. Level Access surveyed 1,600 digital experience professionals for its 2025-26 report and found that at organisations with strong executive backing, professionals were nearly 7 times as likely to say accessibility had improved revenue.
## Where Australia stands on website accessibility in 2026
The Australian Human Rights Commission affirmed WCAG 2.2 AA as the practical minimum under the Disability Discrimination Act in 2025, and the scope now extends well past websites, to artificial intelligence, facial recognition, mobile apps, social media and self-service machines. That's a wider net than most people building a site right now would assume they're standing inside, especially since around 5.5 million Australians live with disability. They are the website visitor filling in a form, booking something, or trying to find information before deciding whether to get in touch.
## Why accessibility overlays and widgets don't (always) work
If you've ever installed a plugin that promises accessibility compliance in one click, you've probably assumed the job's done, but it isn't. Overlay tools and toolbar widgets sit on top of a page without touching the underlying code, so a site with no real heading structure, missing alt text and unlabelled forms stays exactly as inaccessible after installing one.
*Worth checking now, on your own site*: try tabbing through the homepage without touching the mouse. If you can't reach every link and button that way, or you lose track of where you are on the page, that's the gap a widget won't close.
## Building accessibility into your website
This is what building accessibility into your website can look like:
**Two-pass testing, not one.** An automated scan catches structural issues. It doesn't catch whether the experience makes sense. Both passes matter: run a tool, then have someone go through the site with a keyboard and screen reader.
**Catch it at the point of authoring, not after publishing.** A plugin flagging a missing alt text field or a skipped heading level while someone's writing the page catches the problem ***before*** it goes live.
**Reduced motion and dark mode are considered from the start.** Built at the component level from the start, they respond to what the visitor's own device is already set to, rather than requiring a manual toggle someone has to find.
**Cognitive load is a design decision, not a compliance checkbox.** Consistent navigation patterns, uncluttered layouts, predictable structure. This sits outside what any checklist measures, and it's often the difference between a technically compliant site and one that's genuinely easy to use.
**Test with real tasks.** Give someone a real thing to do, find a resource, complete a form, and watch where it breaks down. That's a more honest test than checking whether a page merely looks accessible.
**PDFs get checked, too.** Anything the CMS lets someone upload is part of the accessibility surface, not just the page it sits on. It's easy to forget, and it's usually the first thing that slips.
For anyone visiting a website in 2026, whether they're booking something, filling in a form, or reading a page properly, accessibility is the difference between a site that works for them and one that quietly doesn't. If any of the checks above turned up something on your own site, that's worth acting on now to build a more inclusive web in 2026.
**Sources**
1. WebAIM. *The WebAIM Million: The 2026 Report on the Accessibility of the Top 1,000,000 Home Pages.*
2. Level Access. *State of Digital Accessibility Report 2025-2026.*
3. Australian Human Rights Commission. *Guidelines on Equal Access to Digital Goods and Services.*
4. Australian Human Rights Commission. *New Guidelines to Help Providers of Digital Tech Meet Accessibility Obligations* (media release).
---
## About the author
 
**Jessica Kaitse** is a co-founder of Remedy Studio, a Perth web design and development studio that builds and looks after websites for schools, not-for-profits and healthcare organisations. She has worked on websites for more than 25 years and in SEO for 20. She focuses on strategy, content, and building sites that work now and hold up later, the thinking behind Remedy's vision: **build the present, own the future.**
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### Written by Remedy
We're a Perth-based web design and development agency helping schools, nonprofits, and businesses build digital infrastructure that lasts. We believe great design should be accessible to organisations doing important work.
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