The HTTP Archive published its report on the state of accessibility on the web, based on scores generated with the Lighthouse Accessibility Audit, a feature of Google’s Lighthouse website auditing tool that also measures website performance, best practices, and SEO. The report compared traditional content management systems with website building platforms, with WordPress scoring surprisingly well.
Lighthouse is a feature available through Chrome DevTools built into every Chrome-based browser and as one of the audits on the standalone PageSpeed Insights tool.
HTTP Archive
The research was conducted by the HTTP Archive, a community driven open source project that tracks data about how how sites are built and perform. They offer a configurable report of how different content management platforms perform that is updated monthly.
The accessibility report was done using data collected by the The WebAim Million study which is based on the top one million website home pages. WebAim Million uses data from the Tranco list which itself is based on six different sources to come up with the list of million sites, a list that is designed to be resistant to manipulation.
The Tranco List site explains:
“Researchers in web security or Internet measurements often use rankings of popular websites. However, in our paper we showed that these rankings disagree on which domains are most popular, can change significantly on a daily basis and can be manipulated (by malicious actors).
As the research community still benefits from regularly updated lists of popular domains, we provide Tranco, a ranking that improves upon the shortcomings of current lists. We also emphasize the reproducibility of these rankings and the studies using them by providing permanent citable references.
We currently use the lists from five providers: Cisco Umbrella (available free of charge), and Majestic (available under a CC BY 3.0 license), Farsight (only for the default list), the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) (available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license), and Cloudflare Radar (available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license). Tranco is not affiliated with any of these providers.”
Top CMS Accessibility Performance
HTTP Archive performed it’s research to identify the best performing platforms and shortcomings of each.
Accessibility: Traditional CMS
Adobe Experience Manager and Contentful were the top traditional content management systems when it came to accessibility, tied with a score of 87%, followed by Sitecore and WordPress in second place. An interesting fact about the top ranked CMSs is that, except for WordPress, three of the four top ranked CMSs were closed source, Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), Contentful and Sitecore .
Accessibility Scores By CMS:
- Adobe Experience Manager 87%
- Contentful 87%
- Sitecore 85%
- WordPress 85%
- Craft CMS 84%
- Contao 84%
- Drupal 84%
- Liferay 83%
- TYPO3 CMS 83%
- DNN 82%
What’s going on with the CMS scores? HTTP Archive explains:
“When most folks think about CMS, they think about the ones that you can download and install yourself. This is predominantly made up of open source tools, but not exclusively. Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), Contentful and Sitecore were the most accessible three in this list of top 10. A possible explanation for this is that closed-source software like AEM is more likely to be used by larger corporations, which have more resources to address accessibility issues. Additionally, open-source software gives website owners a lot of freedom, which in some cases can lead to worse accessibility.”
Accessibility: Website Platforms
This comparison is by website building platform, comparing platforms like Wix, Duda, and Squarespace. The accessibility scores for the platforms were higher than the scores for traditional CMSs, reflecting how private platforms are better able to control variables as opposed to an open source CMS that offers users a more open ended experience.
Accessibility Scores By Website Platform
- Wix 94%
- Squarespace 92%
- Google Sites 90%
- Duda 87%
- Hubspot CMS Hub 87%
- Pixnet 87%
- Weebly 86%
- GoDaddy Website Builder 85%
- Webnode 84%
- Tilda 83%
Wix Beats Out All CMS & Platforms
What’s notable about these scores is that sites built with Wix score higher for accessibility than all other sites built on any other CMS or website building platform. Ninety four percent of sites built with Wix have a That’s a reflection of Wix’s well-known effort to create a product that is strong in performance, SEO and accessibility.
Here is the list arranged in descending order by percentage:
1. Wix – 94%
2. Squarespace – 92%
3. Google Sites – 90%
4. Adobe Experience Manager – 87%
5. Contentful – 87%
6. Duda – 87%
7. Hubspot CMS Hub – 87%
8. Pixnet – 87%
9. Sitecore – 85%
10. WordPress – 85%
11. GoDaddy Website Builder – 85%
12. Weebly – 86%
13. Craft CMS – 84%
14. Contao – 84%
15. Drupal – 84%
16. Webnode – 84%
17. Liferay – 83%
18. TYPO3 CMS – 83%
19. Tilda – 83%
20. DNN – 82%
Website Accessibility
SEOs are understandably motivated by best practices for ranking better. For example, many didn’t prioritize site performance until it became a ranking factor, even though website performance improves sales and advertising performance and may have indirect impact on rankings.
Accessibility also has indirect advantages for improved search performance. For example, about .5% of the female population and 8% of males are color blind. Why would anyone who cares about their rankings alienate, frustrate and exclude approximately 4.5% of website visitors?
Wix and Squarespace are prioritizing accessibility. Everyone else should as well, because it’s both ethical and a sound business practice.
Read the HTTP Archive report here.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Happy_Nati