vital-scans open quality ledger

www.cms.gov: week 2026-W39

This is the 2026-W39 ISO-week report (4208 pages fetched, 2561 unique pages audited by axe/Alfa). Generated 2026-09-30. Compared against 2026-W38 (4664 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: 21 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
1
Regressed this week
1

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 366 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 248 Without vision, Limited vision Give every <img> a meaningful alt attribute. Use alt="" only for decorative images so screen readers skip them. pages (CSV)
<html> element must have a lang attribute (WCAG 3.1.1) (rule↗) Serious 256 Without vision, Limited cognitive, language, or learning ability Add a lang attribute to <html> (e.g. lang="en"). pages (CSV)
Target size is at least 44×44 CSS pixels (Enhanced) (WCAG 2.5.5) (rule↗) Moderate 377 — 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 367 — See remediation guidance: https://alfa.siteimprove.com/rules/sia-r73 pages (CSV)
Form field label is visible (WCAG criterion undetermined) (rule↗) Moderate 346 — 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 210 Without vision, Limited vision Use <ul>/<ol> with only <li> children for lists; don't fake lists with <div>s. pages (CSV)
Heading levels should only increase by one (WCAG criterion undetermined) (rule↗) Moderate 265 — Use heading levels in order (h1 → h2 → h3) without skipping; structure, not size. pages (CSV)

Progress

Open findings by severity over 16 weeks (lower is better)
Critical Serious Moderate Minor W24W31W39470

Fixed this week

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 47 issue type(s)
Median axe violations / page
0
Pages with axe violations
1032 of 2561 CSV
Median Alfa failures / page
66
Pages with Alfa failures
378 of 378 CSV
Unique pages audited
2561
Lighthouse performance (median)
55/100 262 sampled details
Lighthouse SEO (median)
100/100
Lighthouse best practices (median)
96/100
Lighthouse agentic (median)
99/100
Words per page (median)
1515 main content, nav excluded
Reading ease (median)
42 642 prose pages details
Reading grade (median)
14
Misspellings
25+ distinct details
Broken links
3239 details
Median page weight
1.2 MB +10 KB worse
Median requests per page
40
Estimated energy per page (mean)
0.3979 Wh

Note: page counts differ between weeks (4664 → 4208). Prefer the "pages affected" columns over raw instance counts when comparing.

Scan coverage this week (4208 pages · 2619 succeeded of 4131 attempted)
Pages each engine ran on, per the configured weekly sampling rates.
EnginePagesCoverage
axe256161%
resources194446%
plain-language126730%
standards124129%
sustainability41410%
alfa3789%
lighthouse2626%
tech2616%
security2536%
deprecated-html2426%

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

Changes since 2026-W38 15 change(s)

axe-core

  • New: landmark-banner-is-top-level appeared this week.
  • Resolved: nested-interactive no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: aria-required-children no longer fails on any scanned page.

Alfa

  • Resolved: sia-r11 no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: sia-r7 no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: sia-r45 no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • sia-r53 spread: 164 → 167 pages affected (rate: 33% → 44% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r61 shrank: 435 → 346 pages affected (rate: 89% → 92% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r57 shrank: 163 → 109 pages affected (rate: 33% → 29% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r66 shrank: 190 → 182 pages affected (rate: 39% → 48% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r74 shrank: 190 → 181 pages affected (rate: 39% → 48% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r14 shrank: 189 → 182 pages affected (rate: 38% → 48% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r4 shrank: 56 → 32 pages affected (rate: 11% → 8% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r2 shrank: 55 → 31 pages affected (rate: 11% → 8% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r64 shrank: 55 → 30 pages affected (rate: 11% → 8% 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 (2551)

4807 distinct resources, by type.
TypeCount
PDF documents2688
Iframes1460
Archives (zip, etc.)543
Spreadsheets99
Word/text documents6
Presentations5
Images4
Video files2