vital-scans open quality ledger

nih.gov: week 2026-W38

This is the 2026-W38 ISO-week report (3333 pages fetched, 22 unique pages audited by axe/Alfa). Generated 2026-09-30. Compared against 2026-W37 (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: 5 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).

New this week
0
Fixed this week
0
Regressed this week
7

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 16 — Use heading levels in order (h1 → h2 → h3) without skipping; structure, not size. pages (CSV)
Text has enhanced contrast (WCAG 1.4.6) (rule↗) Moderate 11 — 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 11 — 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 11 — See remediation guidance: https://alfa.siteimprove.com/rules/sia-r111 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)
aria attribute is permitted for element role (WCAG criterion undetermined) (rule↗) Moderate 11 — Only use ARIA states/properties that are allowed on this element/role. pages (CSV)

Progress

Open findings by severity over 14 weeks (lower is better)
Critical Serious Moderate Minor W25W31W38250

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 19 issue type(s)
Median axe violations / page
8
Pages with axe violations
22 of 22 CSV
Median Alfa failures / page
93
Pages with Alfa failures
11 of 11 CSV
Unique pages audited
22
Lighthouse performance (median)
35/100 1 sampled details
Lighthouse SEO (median)
100/100
Lighthouse best practices (median)
77/100
Lighthouse agentic (median)
59/100
Words per page (median)
777 main content, nav excluded
Reading ease (median)
42.6 7 prose pages details
Reading grade (median)
12.5
Misspellings
25+ distinct details
Broken links
12 details
Median page weight
62 KB no change
Median requests per page
6
Estimated energy per page (mean)
0.0231 Wh
Scan coverage this week (3333 pages · 25 succeeded of 3795 attempted)
Pages each engine ran on, per the configured weekly sampling rates.
EnginePagesCoverage
sustainability34810%
axe221%
resources221%
alfa110%
standards100%
plain-language80%
security20%
deprecated-html20%
lighthouse10%

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

Changes since 2026-W37 11 change(s)

axe-core

  • New: image-alt appeared this week.
  • New: page-has-heading-one appeared this week.
  • New: list appeared this week.
  • New: empty-heading appeared this week.
  • Resolved: aria-allowed-attr no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • heading-order shrank: 19 → 16 pages affected (rate: 83% → 73% of pages scanned).
  • landmark-unique shrank: 15 → 11 pages affected (rate: 65% → 50% of pages scanned).

Alfa

  • New: sia-r85 appeared this week.
  • New: sia-r78 appeared this week.
  • New: sia-r64 appeared this week.
  • sia-r53 shrank: 12 → 8 pages affected (rate: 86% → 73% 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.

New this week (3)

107 distinct resources, by type.
TypeCount
Word/text documents67
Spreadsheets22
Images13
PDF documents5