Accessibility Issues Taxonomy

A comprehensive reference of common web accessibility issues organized into 12 categories. Use this taxonomy to understand, identify, and prioritize accessibility barriers across your digital products.

75 Issues

12 Categories

~35 WCAG Criteria

Web Accessibility in 2025: Year-over-Year Trends

Data drawn from the WebAIM Million 2025 annual analysis of the top 1,000,000 home pages. The table below compares key accessibility metrics between February 2024 and February 2025.

Metric	2024	2025	Change
Pages with WCAG failures	95.9%	94.8%	-1.1 pp
Average errors per page	56.8	51.0	-10.3%
Low contrast text	81.0%	79.1%	-1.9 pp
Missing alt text for images	~54.5%	55.5%	+1.0 pp
Missing form labels	48.6%	48.2%	-0.4 pp
Empty links	~44%	45.4%	+1.4 pp
Empty buttons	~28%	29.6%	+1.6 pp
Missing document language	~17%	15.8%	-1.2 pp
Pages with skip links	13.3%	13.7%	+0.4 pp

Overall trend: The WebAIM Million 2025 report found a 10.3% reduction in detected errors compared to the previous year — the largest single-year improvement since the study began in 2019. Despite this progress, 94.8% of home pages still had automatically detectable WCAG 2 failures.

Browse Issues by Category

Search, filter, and explore accessibility issues across all categories. Each issue includes its WCAG criteria, severity level, and estimated prevalence.

Category

Severity

Showing 75 of 75 issues

IMG-001

Critical

Missing Alternative Text

IMG-002

Major

Decorative Images Not Hidden

IMG-003

Major

Uninformative Alternative Text

IMG-004

Critical

Missing Alt Text on Linked Images

IMG-005

Major

Complex Images Without Long Description

IMG-006

Major

SVG Images Not Accessible

FRM-001

Critical

Missing Form Input Labels

FRM-002

Major

Missing Required Field Indicators

FRM-003

Major

Inadequate Error Messages

FRM-004

Major

Missing Fieldset and Legend for Related Controls

FRM-005

Minor

Missing Autocomplete Attributes

FRM-006

Major

Error Messages Not Programmatically Associated

FRM-007

Major

Form Submission Without Confirmation or Prevention

LNK-001

Critical

Empty Links

LNK-002

Critical

Empty Buttons

LNK-003

AAA

Major

Ambiguous Link Text

LNK-004

Major

Links Not Distinguishable From Text

LNK-005

Critical

Non-Interactive Element Used as Button or Link

LNK-006

AAA

Minor

Links That Open in New Window Without Warning

LNK-007

Minor

Adjacent Duplicate Links

NAV-001

Major

Missing Skip Navigation Link

NAV-002

Major

Inconsistent Navigation

NAV-003

Major

Missing or Incorrect Landmark Roles

NAV-004

Critical

Dropdown Menus Not Keyboard Accessible

NAV-005

AAA

Minor

Current Page Not Indicated in Navigation

NAV-006

AAA

Minor

Breadcrumb Navigation Not Accessible

TXT-001

Major

Text Does Not Resize Up to 200%

TXT-002

Major

Content Lost on Reflow at 320px

TXT-003

Major

Text Spacing Cannot Be Overridden

TXT-004

Major

Content Not in Meaningful Reading Order

TXT-005

Minor

Language of Parts Not Identified

TXT-006

AAA

Minor

Justified Text Causing Readability Issues

CLR-001

Critical

Insufficient Text Contrast

CLR-002

Major

Insufficient Non-Text Contrast

CLR-003

Critical

Color Used as Only Means of Conveying Information

CLR-004

Major

Insufficient Contrast for Placeholder Text

CLR-005

Major

Link Text Not Distinguishable from Surrounding Text

CLR-006

AAA

Major

Insufficient Focus Indicator Contrast

STR-001

Critical

Missing Document Language

STR-002

Major

Missing or Improper Heading Structure

STR-003

Major

Missing Page Title or Non-Descriptive Title

STR-004

Major

Missing Landmark Regions

STR-005

Minor

Lists Not Marked Up as Lists

STR-006

Major

Duplicate IDs on Page

STR-007

Minor

Incorrect Use of Structural Markup for Presentation

TBL-001

Critical

Data Table Missing Header Cells

TBL-002

Major

Missing Table Caption or Summary

TBL-003

Major

Complex Table Without Proper Header Association

TBL-004

Major

Layout Table With Structural Markup

TBL-005

Major

Missing Row or Column Scope

KBD-001

Critical

Interactive Element Not Keyboard Accessible

KBD-002

Critical

Focus Not Visible

KBD-003

Critical

Keyboard Trap

KBD-004

Major

Illogical Tab Order

KBD-005

Major

Focus Not Managed After Dynamic Content Changes

KBD-006

AAA

Major

Missing Focus Indicator on Custom Components

KBD-007

Major

Scrollable Region Not Keyboard Accessible

ARA-001

Major

ARIA Used Instead of Native HTML

ARA-002

Critical

Invalid or Misused ARIA Roles

ARA-003

Major

Missing ARIA States on Interactive Widgets

ARA-004

Major

Dynamic Content Updates Not Announced

ARA-005

Critical

Missing Accessible Names on ARIA Widgets

ARA-006

Critical

Incorrect Use of aria-hidden

ARA-007

Major

Custom Widget Missing Required ARIA Properties

MED-001

Critical

Video Missing Captions

MED-002

Critical

Live Video Missing Captions

MED-003

Major

Video Missing Audio Description

MED-004

Major

Audio-Only Content Missing Transcript

MED-005

Major

Media Autoplays With Sound

MED-006

Critical

Media Player Not Keyboard Accessible

DOC-001

Critical

PDF Not Tagged for Accessibility

DOC-002

Minor

Download Link Missing File Type and Size Information

DOC-003

Major

Embedded Document Not Accessible

DOC-004

Critical

Scanned Image PDF Without OCR

DOC-005

Major

Document Missing Language Setting

Data Sources

This taxonomy was compiled from the following authoritative sources on web accessibility. All prevalence data, WCAG mappings, and severity ratings were cross-referenced across multiple reports.

WebAIM Million

Annual accessibility analysis of the top 1,000,000 home pages

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WebAIM Screen Reader User Survey

Survey of screen reader users on preferences and pain points

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HTTP Archive (Web Almanac)

Large-scale analysis of accessibility practices across millions of sites

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WCAG 2.2 Specification

W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2

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Section 508 ICT Testing Baseline

Federal accessibility testing standards for ICT products

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Verification methodology: Each issue in this taxonomy was verified against at least two independent sources. Severity ratings combine WCAG conformance level requirements with real-world prevalence data.