vital-scans open quality ledger

www.cms.gov: week 2026-W36

This is the 2026-W36 ISO-week report (3575 pages fetched, 2096 unique pages audited by axe/Alfa). Generated 2026-09-06. Compared against 2026-W35 (7026 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: 23 required finding type(s) (handling: review). Aspirational queue: 0 finding type(s). Advisory queue: 0 finding type(s). Unmapped review queue: 8 finding type(s).

New this week
0
Fixed this week
0
Regressed this week
4

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 345 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 504 — 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 502 — See remediation guidance: https://alfa.siteimprove.com/rules/sia-r73 pages (CSV)
Form field label is visible (WCAG criterion undetermined) (rule↗) Moderate 463 — See remediation guidance: https://alfa.siteimprove.com/rules/sia-r61 pages (CSV)
Images must have alternative text (WCAG 1.1.1) (rule↗) Critical 164 Without vision, Limited vision Give every <img> a meaningful alt attribute. Use alt="" only for decorative images so screen readers skip them. pages (CSV)
<ul> and <ol> must only directly contain <li>, <script> or <template> elements (WCAG 1.3.1) (rule↗) Serious 195 Without vision, Limited vision Use <ul>/<ol> with only <li> children for lists; don't fake lists with <div>s. pages (CSV)
<html> element must have a lang attribute (WCAG 3.1.1) (rule↗) Serious 175 Without vision, Limited cognitive, language, or learning ability Add a lang attribute to <html> (e.g. lang="en"). pages (CSV)
Text has enhanced contrast (WCAG 1.4.6) (rule↗) Moderate 235 — Increase text contrast to meet WCAG AAA (7:1). pages (CSV)

Progress

Open findings by severity over 13 weeks (lower is better)
Critical Serious Moderate Minor W24W30W36470

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 48 issue type(s)
Median axe violations / page
0
Pages with axe violations
857 of 2096
Median Alfa failures / page
64
Pages with Alfa failures
504 of 504
Unique pages audited
2096
Lighthouse performance (median)
59/100 202 sampled details
Lighthouse SEO (median)
100/100
Lighthouse best practices (median)
92/100
Lighthouse agentic (median)
99/100
Words per page (median)
1258 main content, nav excluded
Reading ease (median)
41 504 prose pages
Reading grade (median)
14
Misspellings
25+ distinct details
Broken links
2026 details
Median page weight
1.2 MB -1 KB better
Median requests per page
40
Estimated energy per page (mean)
0.3763 Wh

Note: page counts differ between weeks (7026 → 3575). Prefer the "pages affected" columns over raw instance counts when comparing.

Scan coverage this week (3575 pages · 2182 succeeded of 3598 attempted)
Pages each engine ran on, per the configured weekly sampling rates.
EnginePagesCoverage
axe209659%
resources209659%
standards107430%
plain-language99828%
alfa50414%
sustainability34110%
tech2186%
security2166%
deprecated-html2086%
lighthouse2026%

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

Changes since 2026-W35 19 change(s)

axe-core

  • New: scrollable-region-focusable appeared this week.
  • New: image-redundant-alt appeared this week.
  • Resolved: select-name no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: aria-allowed-role no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: landmark-main-is-top-level no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: landmark-no-duplicate-main no longer fails on any scanned page.

Alfa

  • New: sia-r87 appeared this week.
  • New: sia-r7 appeared this week.
  • Resolved: sia-r59 no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: sia-r75 no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: sia-r42 no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: sia-r70 no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: sia-r76 no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: sia-r45 no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • sia-r53 shrank: 424 → 228 pages affected (rate: 43% → 45% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r74 shrank: 483 → 233 pages affected (rate: 49% → 46% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r14 shrank: 478 → 233 pages affected (rate: 48% → 46% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r113 shrank: 196 → 119 pages affected (rate: 20% → 24% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r46 shrank: 39 → 33 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 (2743)

4952 distinct resources, by type.
TypeCount
PDF documents2609
Iframes1583
Archives (zip, etc.)590
Spreadsheets145
Word/text documents8
Presentations6
Images6
Embedded media players2
Video files2
Audio files1