vital-scans open quality ledger

nih.gov: week 2026-W39

This is the 2026-W39 ISO-week report (3333 pages fetched, 23 unique pages audited by axe/Alfa). Generated 2026-09-30. Compared against 2026-W38 (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).

Change this week

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

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 23 — 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 19 — Use heading levels in order (h1 → h2 → h3) without skipping; structure, not size. pages (CSV)
Text has minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 (WCAG 1.4.8) (rule↗) Moderate 12 — 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 12 — See remediation guidance: https://alfa.siteimprove.com/rules/sia-r111 pages (CSV)
aria attribute is permitted for element role (WCAG criterion undetermined) (rule↗) Moderate 12 — Only use ARIA states/properties that are allowed on this element/role. pages (CSV)
Form field label is visible (WCAG criterion undetermined) (rule↗) Moderate 12 — See remediation guidance: https://alfa.siteimprove.com/rules/sia-r61 pages (CSV)
Scrolling content can be accessed by keyboard (WCAG criterion undetermined) (rule↗) Moderate 12 — See remediation guidance: https://alfa.siteimprove.com/rules/sia-r57 pages (CSV)

Progress

Open findings by severity over 15 weeks (lower is better)
Critical Serious Moderate Minor W25W32W39250
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
2026-W3711110
2026-W3812151
2026-W3902151

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 18 issue type(s)

Median axe violations / page
8
Pages with axe violations
23 of 23 CSV
Median Alfa failures / page
91
Pages with Alfa failures
12 of 12 CSV
Unique pages audited
23
Lighthouse performance (median)
30/100 2 sampled details
Lighthouse SEO (median)
100/100
Lighthouse best practices (median)
77/100
Lighthouse agentic (median)
69/100
Words per page (median)
717 main content, nav excluded
Reading ease (median)
43.6 7 prose pages details
Reading grade (median)
12.6
Misspellings
25+ distinct details
Broken links
8 details
Median page weight
62 KB no change
Median requests per page
6
Estimated energy per page (mean)
0.042 Wh
Scan coverage this week (3333 pages · 27 succeeded of 4089 attempted)
Pages each engine ran on, per the configured weekly sampling rates.
EnginePagesCoverage
sustainability3129%
axe231%
resources231%
standards150%
alfa120%
plain-language80%
tech30%
lighthouse20%
deprecated-html20%
security20%

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

Changes since 2026-W38 12 change(s)

axe-core

  • Resolved: image-alt no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: page-has-heading-one no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • link-in-text-block shrank: 22 → 22 pages affected (rate: 100% → 96% of pages scanned).
  • empty-heading spread: 3 → 6 pages affected (rate: 14% → 26% of pages scanned).
  • heading-order spread: 16 → 19 pages affected (rate: 73% → 83% of pages scanned).
  • landmark-unique shrank: 11 → 11 pages affected (rate: 50% → 48% of pages scanned).

Alfa

  • sia-r66 shrank: 11 → 11 pages affected (rate: 100% → 92% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r85 spread: 3 → 4 pages affected (rate: 27% → 33% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r53 spread: 8 → 10 pages affected (rate: 73% → 83% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r78 spread: 2 → 3 pages affected (rate: 18% → 25% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r62 shrank: 11 → 11 pages affected (rate: 100% → 92% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r64 spread: 2 → 4 pages affected (rate: 18% → 33% 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.

142 distinct resources, by type.
TypeCount
PDF documents122
Images12
Embedded media players7
Spreadsheets1