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ACCESSIBILITY

The 4 accessibility failures I find in almost every audit

By Guillaume Rosse Updated 3 min read

The short answer

Insufficient contrast, an invisible keyboard focus, page titles that say nothing, and an illogical focus order. I find them in almost every audit, from small businesses to enterprise clients. The good news: you can spot them yourself in a few minutes, and they can be fixed without rebuilding the website.

Why always the same ones?

Because they come from the same place: design choices, and themes or components reused from one website to the next. A fashionable light grey, a focus outline removed "because it looks ugly", a page template duplicated without changing its title, and the defect ends up on every page.

Public data points the same way. The WebAIM Million 2026, which tests the top million home pages every year, found detectable errors on 95.9% of them, and low-contrast text on 83.9%. Those figures only count what an automated tool can see: the reality is necessarily worse.

Failure WCAG 2.2 RGAA 4.1 (France) Quick test
Insufficient contrast 1.4.3 and 1.4.11 3.2 and 3.3 A contrast checker
Focus not visible enough 2.4.7 10.7 Navigate with the Tab key
Page title not meaningful 2.4.2 8.6 Look at the browser tab
Illogical focus order 2.4.3 12.8 Navigate with the Tab key

1. Is the contrast sufficient?

WCAG success criterion 1.4.3 sets the minimum contrast between text and its background:

  • 4.5:1 for regular text;
  • 3:1 for large text (24px, or 18.5px bold);
  • 3:1 for user interface components and meaningful graphics (criterion 1.4.11), such as a form field border or an icon with no text.

What I see most often: light grey text on a white background, unreadable placeholder text in forms, text laid over a photo, and buttons in a brand colour too light for their white text.

Fix: darken the grey, add an overlay behind text on images, or switch the button text to black. Your brand guidelines almost never change as a result.

2. Can you see where you are with a keyboard?

Criterion 2.4.7 requires the keyboard focus indicator to be visible. Someone who navigates with a keyboard, because they can't use a mouse or simply prefer not to, must always know which link or button they're on.

The culprit is almost always one line of CSS: outline: none, added in a theme or a style reset to remove the "unsightly" outline on click. With no replacement style, the focus becomes invisible.

Test: open your website and press the Tab key a few times. If you lose track of the active element, it fails.

Fix: a clear, high-contrast :focus-visible style, which only shows for keyboard users. With WCAG 2.2, also check that a sticky header doesn't hide the focused element (criterion 2.4.11).

3. Does every page have a meaningful title?

Criterion 2.4.2 requires every page to have a title that describes its topic or purpose. The page title is the text in the browser tab. It's also the first thing a screen reader announces, and what Google shows in its results.

What I see most often: the same title on every page ("Home | My brand"), a title never updated in an app that changes view without reloading, or form steps that all keep the same title.

Fix: a unique title per page, starting with what it contains: "Basket (3 items) | My shop". It's a direct gain for SEO too.

4. Is the focus order logical?

Criterion 2.4.3 requires the keyboard focus to follow an order that preserves meaning, in other words the page's logical reading order.

The most frequent causes:

  • tabindex attributes with a positive value, which force an artificial order;
  • a CSS layout that visually rearranges blocks without changing the order in the code;
  • a modal window that opens without moving the focus into it, or that you can tab out of without closing it;
  • hidden elements still reachable with a keyboard, such as a closed mobile menu.

Test: the Tab key again. If the focus jumps from one end of the page to the other, or disappears into an invisible element, it fails.

Where should you start?

Run the Tab key test on your three main pages: the home page, a service or product page, and your contact form. It takes less than ten minutes and reveals three of the four problems on its own.

For a complete, criterion-by-criterion picture, that's what an audit is for. The audit options are on the Accessibility page, and what they cost on the market is explained in how much does an accessibility audit cost.

Frequently asked questions

Can an automated tool detect these 4 failures?

Only partly. A tool reliably catches simple text contrast issues, but not text over an image, whether a page title is meaningful, or whether the focus order makes sense. For those three, you need to test by hand, with a keyboard.

Is fixing these 4 issues enough to make a website compliant?

No. WCAG 2.2 level AA has dozens of success criteria, and an audit checks many others: images, forms, structure, media. But these four come up most often, and fixing them already makes the website noticeably easier to use with a keyboard.

Do these fixes require a design change?

Rarely a deep one. Contrast sometimes means darkening a grey or adjusting a brand colour on buttons. Visible focus, page titles and focus order are fixed in the code, without changing the overall look.

Sources

  1. The WebAIM Million: the 2026 report on the accessibility of the top 1,000,000 home pages · WebAIM
  2. Understanding Success Criterion 1.4.3: Contrast (Minimum) · W3C
  3. Understanding Success Criterion 2.4.7: Focus Visible · W3C
  4. Understanding Success Criterion 2.4.2: Page Titled · W3C
  5. Understanding Success Criterion 2.4.3: Focus Order · W3C
  6. RGAA 4.1: criteria and tests (in French) · DINUM, French government
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