Estudio de Web Almanac 2021

En Web Almanac podemos leer:

The Web Almanac is a comprehensive report on the state of the web, backed by real data and trusted web experts. The 2021 edition is comprised of 24 chapters spanning aspects of page content, user experience, publishing, and distribution.

El capítulo 9 está dedicado a la accesibilidad (Part II Chapter 9 Accessibility). En la introducción podemos leer:

Every year the internet grows—as of January 2021 there are 4.66 billion active internet users. Unfortunately, accessibility is not substantially improving alongside this growth as we’ll see throughout this chapter. As our reliance on internet solutions increases, so does the alienation of people who do not have equal access to the web.

2021 marked the second year of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It is apparent that the disabled population is increasing as a result of long-term effects from COVID -19. In tandem with the long-term health effects of COVID-19, society as a whole has become increasingly dependent on digital services as a result of the pandemic. Everyone is spending more time online and completing more essential activities online as well. According to the Statistics Canada Internet Use Survey, “75% of Canadians 15 years of age and older engaged in various Internet-related activities more often since the onset of the pandemic”.

Products and services are also rapidly shifting online as a result of the pandemic. According to this McKinsey report, “Perhaps more surprising is the speedup in creating digital or digitally enhanced offerings. Across regions, the results suggest a seven-year increase, on average, in the rate at which companies are developing these [online] products and services.”

Web accessibility is about giving complete access to all aspects of an interface to people with disabilities by achieving feature and information parity. A digital product or website is simply not complete if it is not usable by everyone. If a digital product excludes certain disabled populations, this is discrimination and potentially grounds for fines and/or lawsuits. Last year lawsuits related to the Americans with Disabilities Act were up 20%.

Sadly, year over year, we and other teams conducting analysis such as the WebAIM Million are finding very little improvement in these metrics. The WebAIM study found that 97.4% of homepages had automatically detected accessibility failures, which is less than 1% lower than the 2020 audit.

The median overall site score for all Lighthouse Accessibility audit data rose from 80% in 2020 to 82% in 2021. We hope that this 2% increase represents a shift in the right direction. However, these are automated checks, and this could also potentially mean that developers are doing a better job of subverting the rule engine.

Because our analysis is based on automated metrics only, it is important to remember that automated testing captures only a fraction of the accessibility barriers that can be present in an interface. Qualitative analysis, including manual testing and usability testing with people with disabilities, is needed in order to achieve an accessible website or application.

We’ve split up our most interesting insights into six categories:

• Ease of reading
• Ease of page navigation
• Forms
• Media on the Web
• Supporting Assistive technology with ARIA
• Accessibility Overlays

We hope that this chapter, full of sobering metrics and demonstrable accessibility negligence on the Web, will inspire readers to prioritize this work and change their practices, shifting towards a more inclusive internet.