Web accessibility in 2026: global data and a measurement of the .ru zone
For the first time in six years the global accessibility statistics got worse: 95.9% of pages carry WCAG failures, and errors per page rose 10.1% in a year.
Nobody publishes a Russian cut of this, so we parsed the home pages of 600 hosts ourselves. The .ru result: one page in four declares no language, 16.8% of images have no alt, and 57.5% of input fields carry no accessible label — more than half.
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The global picture: worse than a year ago
WebAIM runs a million Tranco home pages through the WAVE engine every year. The February 2026 measurement, published on 30 March:
| Metric | 2026 | A year earlier |
|---|---|---|
| Pages with WCAG 2 failures | 95.9% | 94.8% |
| Errors per page | 56.1 | 51 |
| Low-contrast text | 83.9% | 79.1% |
| Images missing alt | 53.1% of pages | — |
| Form inputs without labels | 51% of pages | — |
| Empty links | 46.3% of pages | — |
| No document language | 13.5% of pages | — |
The point here is not the shares but the direction: a six-year trend of improvement has reversed. Errors per page rose 10.1% in a year, while elements per page rose 22.5%. Pages are growing more complex faster than they are being put right.
ARIA usage rose 27% in a year, and pages using ARIA carry more errors (59.1 against 42). The source claims no causation and neither will we: most likely ARIA is reached for where the interface was already harder.
Method limits WebAIM states itself: automated tools cannot detect every failure, and an absence of detected errors does not mean a page is accessible. Only home pages are tested, not whole sites.
Our measurement: three metrics by zone
On 27 August 2026 we downloaded the home pages of 600 hosts (150 per zone) and parsed the markup. The metrics match WebAIM’s so the numbers are comparable in meaning:
| Zone | Parsed | No document language | Images missing alt | Inputs without labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| .com | 94 | 14.9% | 4.2% | 42.3% |
| .org | 91 | 13.2% | 10.1% | 36.0% |
| .net | 59 | 23.7% | 18.1% | 35.7% |
| .ru | 97 | 24.7% | 16.8% | 57.5% |
For images and inputs the shares are of elements, not pages: .ru yielded 5,611 images (943 with no alt attribute) and 821 inputs (472 with no accessible label); .com yielded 2,589 images (109 without alt) and 246 inputs (104 without a label).
The heaviest figure is 57.5%. More than half the input fields on Russian home pages carry neither an associated label, nor aria-label, nor title. To someone using a screen reader such a field is announced as "edit text" with no indication of what to type.
Sampling caveats: these are domains somebody brought to our tools, not a random slice of a zone, so the .ru level cannot stand in for the Russian web. Comparing zones is sound — they were collected identically. Pages that could not be parsed (unreachable, error redirects, non-HTML) are excluded from the denominator. As with WebAIM, automated checking misses failures — the real picture is worse than the measured one, not better.
What each of the three figures means in practice
Document language. Without <html lang="ru"> a speech synthesiser reads Russian text using English rules, and the result is unintelligible. This is a one-line fix requiring neither a designer nor sign-off. One .ru page in four lacks it.
Images with no alt. When the attribute is absent, a screen reader announces the filename (IMG_20240513_final2.jpg) or stays silent. A distinction matters here: alt="" is a deliberate "this image is decorative, skip it", and we did not count such images as failures. Only a wholly absent attribute counts.
Inputs without labels. The commonest cause is a label implemented as a placeholder inside the field. A placeholder disappears on typing, is not read by some assistive technology, and usually fails contrast. A visible label beside the field solves all three at once.
All three belong to the class of fixes made in markup in a single pass without touching the design. That is what makes these shares particularly galling: they persist not through difficulty but through not being thought of.
What to cross-check against, and what not to take
The second usable source is HTTP Archive: the median Lighthouse accessibility score is 85%, only 31% of mobile sites meet text-contrast requirements, and about 35% of inputs receive an accessible name. But this is a July 2025 crawl published in January 2026; no 2026 edition exists, and these figures must not be presented as current.
The contrast divergence between the two sources (83.9% of pages with an error at WebAIM against 31% of sites passing at HTTP Archive) is not a contradiction but two different metrics: "at least one error on the page" versus "the site passes the audit as a whole". They must not be added or averaged.
What we could not find in primary sources and therefore do not quote: the prevalence of accessibility overlays in 2026; aggregate EU compliance statistics (the European Commission’s page is only an index to 28 national reports, with no aggregate); and 2026 litigation counts — the search results there consist entirely of blogs from accessibility vendors, a commercially interested party.
To check your own page against these same signals, use the page audit — it reports images without alt and the document language alongside its other findings.
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How to check my own site?
Chrome DevTools → Lighthouse → Accessibility report. Or Enterno Security Scanner includes basic a11y checks (Pro: full axe-core).
WCAG 2.2 vs 2.1 — difference?
WCAG 2.2 added 9 new success criteria (Oct 2023): focus appearance, dragging movements, target size, consistent help. Backwards-compatible with 2.1.
Are fines actually applied?
For gov sector — yes, often a prosecutor notifies the Ministry. Private business — rarely, but risk exists via Rospotrebnadzor (consumer protection).
Quick wins for low-effort compliance?
1) alt on images. 2) Semantic HTML (nav/main/article instead of div). 3) aria-label on icon buttons. 4) Color contrast check via WebAIM. These 4 close ~60% of automated violations.
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