The WebAIM Million report — an annual accessibility analysis of the top 1 million websites — consistently finds that over 95% of home pages have detectable WCAG failures. WordPress sites are no exception. The most common issues are well-understood, frequently automated, and largely fixable without redesigning anything.
Accessibility is often framed as a compliance exercise. It's more useful to think of it as a quality signal: if a screen reader can't understand your site, search engine crawlers often can't either. Fixing accessibility issues tends to improve SEO simultaneously.
The Most Common Issues
- Missing alt text on images — the most common WCAG failure by volume. Every non-decorative image must have descriptive alt text. Images used purely for visual decoration should have
alt=""so screen readers skip them. - Insufficient colour contrast — WCAG requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text (18px+ or 14px+ bold). Light grey text on white backgrounds — extremely common in modern design — typically fails this threshold.
- Form inputs without labels — every form field needs an associated
<label>element or anaria-label. Placeholder text alone doesn't count — it disappears when the user types and is not reliably read by all screen readers. - Links with non-descriptive text — "Click here", "Read more", "Learn more" provide no context to screen reader users who navigate by links. Link text should describe the destination: "Read the Image Optimizer documentation".
- Missing skip navigation link — keyboard users and screen reader users need a way to skip past repeated navigation to reach the main content. Most WordPress themes don't include this.
- Keyboard focus not visible — many themes remove the default browser focus ring with
outline: nonewithout providing an alternative. Keyboard users cannot see where they are on the page. - Missing language attribute —
<html lang="en">is required so screen readers use the correct pronunciation rules. Surprisingly common to find it missing or incorrect.
Automated accessibility tools like axe, WAVE, and Lighthouse can detect roughly 30–40% of WCAG issues. The rest require manual testing — navigating with only a keyboard, using a screen reader, testing with different zoom levels. Automated tools are the starting point, not the finish line. That said, fixing the issues automated tools catch is the right first step for most sites.
What Accessibility Fixer Will Do
The Accessibility Fixer plugin being built at MAA Labs will scan WordPress pages for common WCAG failures — missing alt text, contrast issues, unlabelled inputs, non-descriptive links — and either fix them automatically where it's safe to do so, or surface them as an actionable list for manual review. The goal is to close the gap between a typical WordPress site and WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance, without requiring a developer or a paid accessibility overlay. Free when it launches.
Accessibility Fixer is coming soon.
Scan for WCAG failures, auto-fix what can be fixed, surface what needs manual review. Free when it launches.
Preview plugin →