vital-scans open quality ledger

www.cms.gov: week 2026-W38

This is the 2026-W38 ISO-week report (4664 pages fetched, 2866 unique pages audited by axe/Alfa). Generated 2026-09-30. Compared against 2026-W37 (4636 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: 9 finding type(s).

New this week
0
Fixed this week
0
Regressed this week
3

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 424 Without color perception, Limited vision See remediation guidance: https://dequeuniversity.com/rules/axe/4.12/link-in-text-block?application=axeAPI pages (CSV)
Images must have alternative text (WCAG 1.1.1) (rule↗) Critical 294 Without vision, Limited vision Give every <img> a meaningful alt attribute. Use alt="" only for decorative images so screen readers skip them. pages (CSV)
Target size is at least 44×44 CSS pixels (Enhanced) (WCAG 2.5.5) (rule↗) Moderate 491 — 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 484 — See remediation guidance: https://alfa.siteimprove.com/rules/sia-r73 pages (CSV)
<html> element must have a lang attribute (WCAG 3.1.1) (rule↗) Serious 305 Without vision, Limited cognitive, language, or learning ability Add a lang attribute to <html> (e.g. lang="en"). pages (CSV)
Form field label is visible (WCAG criterion undetermined) (rule↗) Moderate 435 — 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 254 Without vision, Limited vision Use <ul>/<ol> with only <li> children for lists; don't fake lists with <div>s. pages (CSV)
All page content should be contained by landmarks (WCAG criterion undetermined) (rule↗) Moderate 307 — Wrap all page content in landmarks (header, nav, main, footer) so users can navigate by region. pages (CSV)

Progress

Open findings by severity over 15 weeks (lower is better)
Critical Serious Moderate Minor W24W31W38470

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 51 issue type(s)
Median axe violations / page
0
Pages with axe violations
1162 of 2866 CSV
Median Alfa failures / page
57
Pages with Alfa failures
491 of 491 CSV
Unique pages audited
2866
Lighthouse performance (median)
57/100 297 sampled details
Lighthouse SEO (median)
100/100
Lighthouse best practices (median)
96/100
Lighthouse agentic (median)
99/100
Words per page (median)
1143 main content, nav excluded
Reading ease (median)
41 660 prose pages details
Reading grade (median)
14
Misspellings
25+ distinct details
Broken links
2193 details
Median page weight
1.2 MB +29 KB worse
Median requests per page
41
Estimated energy per page (mean)
0.3986 Wh

Note: page counts differ between weeks (4636 → 4664). Prefer the "pages affected" columns over raw instance counts when comparing.

Scan coverage this week (4664 pages · 2952 succeeded of 4575 attempted)
Pages each engine ran on, per the configured weekly sampling rates.
EnginePagesCoverage
axe286661%
resources232450%
standards144231%
plain-language141630%
alfa49111%
sustainability44910%
deprecated-html3006%
lighthouse2976%
tech2806%
security2746%

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

Changes since 2026-W37 13 change(s)

axe-core

  • Resolved: aria-allowed-role no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: meta-viewport no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: aria-progressbar-name no longer fails on any scanned page.

Alfa

  • New: sia-r45 appeared this week.
  • Resolved: sia-r85 no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: sia-r20 no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: sia-r47 no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: sia-r87 no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • sia-r57 shrank: 208 → 163 pages affected (rate: 30% → 33% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r66 shrank: 300 → 190 pages affected (rate: 44% → 39% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r53 shrank: 279 → 164 pages affected (rate: 41% → 33% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r74 shrank: 300 → 190 pages affected (rate: 44% → 39% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r14 shrank: 299 → 189 pages affected (rate: 43% → 38% 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 (2815)

5075 distinct resources, by type.
TypeCount
PDF documents2955
Iframes1505
Archives (zip, etc.)464
Spreadsheets123
Word/text documents9
Images7
Video files5
Audio files3
Presentations3
Embedded media players1