An automated scanner ran 47 WCAG checks against 119 high-traffic websites, covering accessibility, performance, SEO, design, and mobile responsiveness. Each site got a composite score out of 100.
The average came out to 76. Two sites scored an A. Twenty-five scored a D. The D list includes amazon.com at 65, twitter.com at 66, and fda.gov at 66.
- Average score
- 76
- A-grade sites
- 2
- D-grade sites
- 25
| Grade | Range | Count | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | 90–100 | 2 | princeton.edu, thegridwork.space |
| B | 80–89 | 36 | harvard.edu, mit.edu, gov.uk, epa.gov, linkedin.com |
| C | 70–79 | 56 | google.com, nasa.gov, whitehouse.gov, stanford.edu |
| D | 60–69 | 25 | amazon.com, twitter.com, bbc.com, fda.gov, cornell.edu |
Nothing scored below 60.
Government sites
Fifteen government sites averaged 78. service.gov.uk pulled that average up, scoring 89. fda.gov pulled it down to 66. Same legal requirement (WCAG 2.1 AA), 23-point gap.
The sites with dedicated digital service teams scored noticeably higher. gov.uk has GDS. epa.gov and va.gov both landed at 87. whitehouse.gov, the most visited .gov domain, scored 78.
| Site | Score | Grade |
|---|---|---|
| service.gov.uk | 89 | B |
| epa.gov | 87 | B |
| va.gov | 87 | B |
| bundesregierung.de | 84 | B |
| irs.gov | 84 | B |
| nih.gov | 80 | B |
| whitehouse.gov | 78 | C |
| dot.gov | 78 | C |
| dhs.gov | 77 | C |
| ed.gov | 76 | C |
| cdc.gov | 76 | C |
| nasa.gov | 75 | C |
| state.gov | 71 | C |
| fda.gov | 66 | D |
Universities
Thirteen universities, same 78 average. Princeton was the only A at 92. From there it drops fast: Harvard and MIT at 85, then a long C-grade middle. Cornell and NYU landed in D territory (68 and 69), scoring lower than most of the e-commerce sites in this dataset.
| Site | Score | Grade |
|---|---|---|
| princeton.edu | 92 | A |
| harvard.edu | 85 | B |
| mit.edu | 85 | B |
| columbia.edu | 84 | B |
| umich.edu | 81 | B |
| gatech.edu | 80 | B |
| stanford.edu | 79 | C |
| berkeley.edu | 77 | C |
| uchicago.edu | 76 | C |
| ucla.edu | 75 | C |
| caltech.edu | 73 | C |
| nyu.edu | 69 | D |
| cornell.edu | 68 | D |
Bottom 10
No single category owns the bottom. E-commerce and media sites cluster there, but so does a federal agency and an Ivy League university.
| Site | Score | Category |
|---|---|---|
| replicate.com | 61 | Tech |
| spectrum.com | 64 | Telecom |
| amazon.com | 65 | E-commerce |
| aliexpress.com | 65 | E-commerce |
| twitter.com | 66 | Social |
| fda.gov | 66 | Government |
| square.com | 66 | Fintech |
| washingtonpost.com | 67 | Media |
| bbc.com | 68 | Media |
| cornell.edu | 68 | Education |
What keeps showing up
The scan flagged the same five issues across most of the 119 sites. All five have been in the WCAG spec since 2018.
Missing alt text was the most common, showing up on over 70% of pages scanned. After that: low-contrast text (below the 4.5:1 WCAG AA minimum), skipped heading levels (h1 jumping to h3 or h4, which breaks screen reader navigation), form inputs without a <label> element, and missing skip-navigation links that force keyboard users to tab through the entire nav on every page load.
Most of these are fixable in an afternoon. Alt text and heading structure aren't engineering problems. They're attention problems.
Legal context
The European Accessibility Act (EAA) began enforcement in June 2025, covering websites, apps, e-commerce, and banking across the EU. In the US, Section 508 has applied to federal agencies since 1998. Title III ADA lawsuits targeting websites reached 4,605 in 2023 (yes, that number is still climbing).
Full data
Every site in this dataset has a public audit report. The full directory with all 119 scores is browsable, and each row links to its individual report.
Scan any URL at siteaudit.thegridwork.space. The scanner runs locally as a free MCP server via npx gridwork-siteaudit, or in CI via a GitHub Action.
Methodology. 119 sites scanned April 2–8, 2026. Five audit engines (accessibility, performance, SEO, design, mobile), weighted equally, 47 WCAG checks across the accessibility engine. Automated analysis only — manual review catches things a scanner can't.
Reproducibility. Scanner source: github.com/thegridwork/siteaudit. Run any site against the same engine with npx gridwork-siteaudit. Individual reports are linked from the directory.
Corrections. If a score looks wrong, email [email protected]. Corrections get published with credit to whoever caught them.
License. Data under CC BY 4.0. Scanner code under MIT.