vital-scans open quality ledger

nih.gov: week 2026-W36

This is the 2026-W36 ISO-week report (3333 pages fetched, 22 unique pages audited by axe/Alfa). Generated 2026-09-04. Compared against 2026-W35 (3333 fetched). The dashboard headline uses a rolling last-7-days window; this page is the full ISO week. Machine-readable API: snapshot.json · findings.json.

Primary standards queue: 0 required finding type(s) (handling: report). Verification queue: 4 required finding type(s) (handling: review). Aspirational queue: 0 finding type(s). Advisory queue: 0 finding type(s). Unmapped review queue: 6 finding type(s).

Change this week

New this week
0
Fixed this week
0
Regressed this week
2

Fix these first

Highest-leverage issues, ranked by pages affected × severity × people reached. Fixing a shared component often clears many pages at once. Issue links go to the full bug detail on the Accessibility page.

Top 8 issues to prioritize this week.
IssueSeverityPagesWho it affectsHow to fixEvidence
Links must be distinguishable without relying on color (WCAG 1.4.1) (rule↗) Serious 22 Without color perception, Limited vision See remediation guidance: https://dequeuniversity.com/rules/axe/4.12/link-in-text-block?application=axeAPI pages (CSV)
All page content should be contained by landmarks (WCAG criterion undetermined) (rule↗) Moderate 22 — Wrap all page content in landmarks (header, nav, main, footer) so users can navigate by region. pages (CSV)
Heading levels should only increase by one (WCAG criterion undetermined) (rule↗) Moderate 17 — Use heading levels in order (h1 → h2 → h3) without skipping; structure, not size. pages (CSV)
Landmarks should have a unique role or role/label/title (i.e. accessible name) c (WCAG criterion undetermined) (rule↗) Moderate 11 — When a landmark role/type repeats (e.g. two <nav>s), give each a distinct accessible name with aria-label or aria-labelledby (e.g. "Primary" and "Footer" navigation) so screen-reader users can tell them apart. pages (CSV)
Text has enhanced contrast (WCAG 1.4.6) (rule↗) Moderate 9 — Increase text contrast to meet WCAG AAA (7:1). pages (CSV)
Text has minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 (WCAG 1.4.8) (rule↗) Moderate 9 — See remediation guidance: https://alfa.siteimprove.com/rules/sia-r73 pages (CSV)
Target size is at least 44×44 CSS pixels (Enhanced) (WCAG 2.5.5) (rule↗) Moderate 9 — See remediation guidance: https://alfa.siteimprove.com/rules/sia-r111 pages (CSV)
aria attribute is permitted for element role (WCAG criterion undetermined) (rule↗) Moderate 9 — Only use ARIA states/properties that are allowed on this element/role. pages (CSV)

Progress

Open findings by severity over 12 weeks (lower is better)
Critical Serious Moderate Minor W25W30W36250
Open findings by severity, by week
WeekCriticalSeriousModerateMinor
2026-W2501121
2026-W260180
2026-W270120
2026-W280110
2026-W2936233
2026-W3036234
2026-W3136254
2026-W3236234
2026-W3302121
2026-W3412141
2026-W3512141
2026-W3611141

Dropped from this week's sample

These stopped appearing in scan results, but their pages were not re-checked this week — this is not a confirmed fix.

This week at a glance 17 issue type(s)

Median axe violations / page
8
Pages with axe violations
22 of 22
Median Alfa failures / page
95
Pages with Alfa failures
9 of 9
Unique pages audited
22
Lighthouse performance (median)
30/100 1 sampled details
Lighthouse SEO (median)
100/100
Lighthouse best practices (median)
77/100
Lighthouse agentic (median)
56/100
Words per page (median)
751 main content, nav excluded
Reading ease (median)
43 12 prose pages
Reading grade (median)
13
Misspellings
25+ distinct details
Broken links
26 details
Median page weight
60 KB -3 KB better
Median requests per page
6
Estimated energy per page (mean)
0.0195 Wh
Scan coverage this week (3333 pages · 25 succeeded of 3789 attempted)
Pages each engine ran on, per the configured weekly sampling rates.
EnginePagesCoverage
sustainability35211%
axe221%
resources221%
standards130%
plain-language120%
alfa90%
deprecated-html40%
security20%
tech20%
lighthouse10%

History & Trends → Severity, Lighthouse and other measures across 16 weeks.

Changes since 2026-W35 10 change(s)

axe-core

  • New: aria-allowed-attr appeared this week.
  • Resolved: image-alt no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: list no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • heading-order spread: 14 → 17 pages affected (rate: 70% → 77% of pages scanned).
  • landmark-unique shrank: 11 → 11 pages affected (rate: 55% → 50% of pages scanned).
  • empty-heading spread: 1 → 4 pages affected (rate: 5% → 18% of pages scanned).

Alfa

  • Resolved: sia-r2 no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • sia-r53 shrank: 8 → 7 pages affected (rate: 100% → 78% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r85 spread: 1 → 2 pages affected (rate: 13% → 22% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r64 spread: 1 → 2 pages affected (rate: 13% → 22% of pages scanned).

Embedded & linked resources

Non-HTML resources this site links to or embeds — PDFs, Office documents, iframes, and media. The site owner is responsible for their accessibility too. Full inventory with first-seen dates: CSV.

No new resources first seen this week.

23 distinct resources, by type.
TypeCount
Images15
PDF documents8