vital-scans open quality ledger

www.cms.gov: week 2026-W35

This is the 2026-W35 ISO-week report (7026 pages fetched, 3981 unique pages audited by axe/Alfa). Generated 2026-08-30. Compared against 2026-W34 (5906 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: 25 required finding type(s) (handling: review). Aspirational queue: 0 finding type(s). Advisory queue: 0 finding type(s). Unmapped review queue: 10 finding type(s).

New this week
0
Fixed this week
0
Regressed this week
8

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 670 Without color perception, Limited vision See remediation guidance: https://dequeuniversity.com/rules/axe/4.12/link-in-text-block?application=axeAPI pages (CSV)
Target size is at least 44×44 CSS pixels (Enhanced) (WCAG 2.5.5) (rule↗) Moderate 986 — See remediation guidance: https://alfa.siteimprove.com/rules/sia-r111 pages (CSV)
Text has minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 (WCAG 1.4.8) (rule↗) Moderate 975 — See remediation guidance: https://alfa.siteimprove.com/rules/sia-r73 pages (CSV)
Form field label is visible (WCAG criterion undetermined) (rule↗) Moderate 914 — See remediation guidance: https://alfa.siteimprove.com/rules/sia-r61 pages (CSV)
<ul> and <ol> must only directly contain <li>, <script> or <template> elements (WCAG 1.3.1) (rule↗) Serious 390 Without vision, Limited vision Use <ul>/<ol> with only <li> children for lists; don't fake lists with <div>s. pages (CSV)
Images must have alternative text (WCAG 1.1.1) (rule↗) Critical 235 Without vision, Limited vision Give every <img> a meaningful alt attribute. Use alt="" only for decorative images so screen readers skip them. pages (CSV)
Link is distinguishable without relying on color (WCAG 1.4.8) (rule↗) Moderate 483 — See remediation guidance: https://alfa.siteimprove.com/rules/sia-r74 pages (CSV)
Text has enhanced contrast (WCAG 1.4.6) (rule↗) Moderate 479 — Increase text contrast to meet WCAG AAA (7:1). pages (CSV)

Progress

Open findings by severity over 12 weeks (lower is better)
Critical Serious Moderate Minor W24W29W35470

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 55 issue type(s)
Median axe violations / page
0
Pages with axe violations
1572 of 3981
Median Alfa failures / page
65
Pages with Alfa failures
986 of 986
Unique pages audited
3981
Lighthouse performance (median)
58/100 422 sampled details
Lighthouse SEO (median)
100/100
Lighthouse best practices (median)
96/100
Lighthouse agentic (median)
99/100
Words per page (median)
1939 main content, nav excluded
Reading ease (median)
40.7 1075 prose pages
Reading grade (median)
13.9
Misspellings
25+ distinct details
Broken links
3435 details
Median page weight
1.2 MB -18 KB better
Median requests per page
41
Estimated energy per page (mean)
0.3755 Wh

Note: page counts differ between weeks (5906 → 7026). Prefer the "pages affected" columns over raw instance counts when comparing.

Scan coverage this week (7026 pages · 4075 succeeded of 6901 attempted)
Pages each engine ran on, per the configured weekly sampling rates.
EnginePagesCoverage
axe398157%
resources398157%
plain-language208030%
standards202029%
alfa98614%
sustainability6399%
lighthouse4226%
deprecated-html4006%
tech3805%
security3705%

History & Trends → Severity, Lighthouse and other measures across 17 weeks.

Changes since 2026-W34 21 change(s)

axe-core

  • Resolved: scrollable-region-focusable no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: aria-progressbar-name no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: aria-hidden-focus no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • empty-heading spread: 132 → 250 pages affected (rate: 4% → 6% of pages scanned).
  • html-has-lang spread: 145 → 263 pages affected (rate: 5% → 7% of pages scanned).
  • landmark-one-main spread: 145 → 263 pages affected (rate: 5% → 7% of pages scanned).
  • region spread: 145 → 265 pages affected (rate: 5% → 7% of pages scanned).

Alfa

  • New: sia-r11 appeared this week.
  • Resolved: sia-r7 no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: sia-r18 no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: sia-r87 no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • sia-r66 spread: 426 → 479 pages affected (rate: 51% → 49% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r53 spread: 392 → 424 pages affected (rate: 47% → 43% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r74 spread: 427 → 483 pages affected (rate: 51% → 49% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r14 spread: 426 → 478 pages affected (rate: 51% → 48% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r61 spread: 793 → 914 pages affected (rate: 95% → 93% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r57 spread: 276 → 277 pages affected (rate: 33% → 28% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r46 shrank: 54 → 39 pages affected (rate: 6% → 4% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r4 spread: 38 → 72 pages affected (rate: 5% → 7% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r2 spread: 34 → 61 pages affected (rate: 4% → 6% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r64 spread: 35 → 65 pages affected (rate: 4% → 7% 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 (5930)

8872 distinct resources, by type.
TypeCount
PDF documents4575
Iframes3206
Archives (zip, etc.)917
Spreadsheets131
Word/text documents16
Images11
Presentations6
Video files4
Embedded media players4
Audio files2