vital-scans open quality ledger

www.cms.gov: week 2026-W37

This is the 2026-W37 ISO-week report (4636 pages fetched, 2772 unique pages audited by axe/Alfa). Generated 2026-09-13. Compared against 2026-W36 (3575 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: 26 required finding type(s) (handling: review). Aspirational queue: 0 finding type(s). Advisory queue: 0 finding type(s). Unmapped review queue: 12 finding type(s).

New this week
0
Fixed this week
0
Regressed this week
9

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
Target size is at least 44×44 CSS pixels (Enhanced) (WCAG 2.5.5) (rule↗) Moderate 688 — 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 672 — See remediation guidance: https://alfa.siteimprove.com/rules/sia-r73 pages (CSV)
Links must be distinguishable without relying on color (WCAG 1.4.1) (rule↗) Serious 434 Without color perception, Limited vision See remediation guidance: https://dequeuniversity.com/rules/axe/4.12/link-in-text-block?application=axeAPI pages (CSV)
Form field label is visible (WCAG criterion undetermined) (rule↗) Moderate 615 — See remediation guidance: https://alfa.siteimprove.com/rules/sia-r61 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)
<ul> and <ol> must only directly contain <li>, <script> or <template> elements (WCAG 1.3.1) (rule↗) Serious 256 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 253 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 300 — Increase text contrast to meet WCAG AAA (7:1). pages (CSV)

Progress

Open findings by severity over 14 weeks (lower is better)
Critical Serious Moderate Minor W24W30W37470

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
1150 of 2772
Median Alfa failures / page
60
Pages with Alfa failures
688 of 688
Unique pages audited
2772
Lighthouse performance (median)
57/100 271 sampled details
Lighthouse SEO (median)
100/100
Lighthouse best practices (median)
96/100
Lighthouse agentic (median)
99/100
Words per page (median)
1293 main content, nav excluded
Reading ease (median)
41 706 prose pages
Reading grade (median)
14
Misspellings
25+ distinct details
Broken links
1396 details
Median page weight
1.2 MB no change
Median requests per page
40
Estimated energy per page (mean)
0.3722 Wh

Note: page counts differ between weeks (3575 → 4636). Prefer the "pages affected" columns over raw instance counts when comparing.

Scan coverage this week (4636 pages · 2777 succeeded of 4461 attempted)
Pages each engine ran on, per the configured weekly sampling rates.
EnginePagesCoverage
axe277260%
resources277260%
standards142631%
plain-language139930%
alfa68815%
sustainability45410%
security3067%
tech2776%
lighthouse2716%
deprecated-html2666%

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

Changes since 2026-W36 15 change(s)

axe-core

  • New: aria-allowed-role appeared this week.
  • New: meta-viewport appeared this week.
  • Resolved: landmark-banner-is-top-level no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: image-redundant-alt no longer fails on any scanned page.

Alfa

  • New: sia-r70 appeared this week.
  • New: sia-r59 appeared this week.
  • New: sia-r75 appeared this week.
  • sia-r66 spread: 235 → 300 pages affected (rate: 47% → 44% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r53 spread: 228 → 279 pages affected (rate: 45% → 41% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r74 spread: 233 → 300 pages affected (rate: 46% → 44% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r14 spread: 233 → 299 pages affected (rate: 46% → 43% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r61 spread: 463 → 615 pages affected (rate: 92% → 89% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r57 spread: 141 → 208 pages affected (rate: 28% → 30% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r4 spread: 39 → 72 pages affected (rate: 8% → 10% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r46 shrank: 33 → 23 pages affected (rate: 7% → 3% 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 (3950)

6640 distinct resources, by type.
TypeCount
PDF documents3637
Iframes2023
Archives (zip, etc.)719
Spreadsheets142
Images85
Word/text documents14
Video files11
Audio files6
Presentations3