(DYKI-001) Most Top Websites Still Fail Accessibility Checks
Did you know that 97% of the world’s top websites still fail basic accessibility checks? This includes organizations with large budgets, experienced teams, and strong digital brands. Accessibility gaps are rarely caused by lack of effort or bad intent. They usually reflect leadership blind spots in priorities, decision-making, and governance that exist in most organizations.
Why this keeps happening
Accessibility is often framed as a technical concern instead of a leadership responsibility. When leaders don’t ask about accessibility early, teams default to speed, habit, and precedent. Over time, inaccessible patterns become normalized, risks remain unseen, and exclusion is quietly built into everyday digital decisions.
What this signals
When accessibility is not named, expected, or discussed, silence is often mistaken for success. Barriers surface only through complaints, incidents, or legal pressure. In the absence of clear signals, leaders assume things are working, even when exclusion is already present.
Why this matters to leaders
When accessibility failures are common even among high-performing organizations, it signals a leadership gap, not a capability gap. When accessibility remains invisible to leadership, teams can only optimize for what leaders notice, ask about, and reward. The result is repeatable exclusion, regardless of skill or intent.
Where leaders encounter this
This often appears during roadmap approvals, platform selections, redesign sign-offs, or success metric reviews. Accessibility remains absent when progress is measured without visibility into who can fully use what is being delivered.
Closing reflection
If organizations with every advantage still struggle, the issue isn’t whether teams care enough.
The real question is this: where is accessibility currently visible (or invisible) in your leadership decisions, and what would change if you chose to make it impossible to ignore?
Take the Inclusive Leadership Self-Assessment Test
If you’re curious to see where your organization sits on the Digital Accessibility Maturity Model – and what that means for your next leadership decisions – you can take a short, leadership-focused survey to find out.
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About Denis Boudreau
Denis Boudreau is a consultant, trainer, and speaker specializing in digital accessibility and disability inclusion. He works with organizational leaders who want to equip their teams with the skills to create accessible websites and digital products – so no one is left behind. A Certified Professional in Web Accessibility (CPWA), Denis has trained thousands of web professionals over the past 20+ years and delivered hundreds of workshops in both English and French. He has helped leading brands like Netflix, Salesforce, and Victoria’s Secret embed accessibility into their digital strategies, empowering them to meet legal obligations, improve user experience, and connect with more people, more effectively.