vital-scans open quality ledger

www.cms.gov: week 2026-W40

This is the 2026-W40 ISO-week report (1609 pages fetched, 1044 unique pages audited by axe/Alfa). Generated 2026-09-30. Compared against 2026-W39 (4208 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: 19 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
1

Over the whole history of this site, 59115 unique pages have been scanned at least once; 36959 have known accessibility issues. 526 of them were re-checked this ISO week. Download full data (JSON).

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
Images must have alternative text (WCAG 1.1.1) (rule↗) Critical 100 Without vision, Limited vision Give every <img> a meaningful alt attribute. Use alt="" only for decorative images so screen readers skip them. pages (CSV)
Links must be distinguishable without relying on color (WCAG 1.4.1) (rule↗) Serious 141 Without color perception, Limited vision See remediation guidance: https://dequeuniversity.com/rules/axe/4.12/link-in-text-block?application=axeAPI pages (CSV)
<html> element must have a lang attribute (WCAG 3.1.1) (rule↗) Serious 106 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 155 — 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 153 — See remediation guidance: https://alfa.siteimprove.com/rules/sia-r73 pages (CSV)
Form field label is visible (WCAG criterion undetermined) (rule↗) Moderate 146 — 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 90 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 114 — Use heading levels in order (h1 → h2 → h3) without skipping; structure, not size. pages (CSV)

Progress

Open findings by severity over 17 weeks (lower is better)
Critical Serious Moderate Minor W24W32W40470

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 42 issue type(s)
Median axe violations / page
0
Pages with axe violations
416 of 1044 CSV
Median Alfa failures / page
58
Pages with Alfa failures
155 of 155 CSV
Unique pages audited
1044
Lighthouse performance (median)
57/100 95 sampled details
Lighthouse SEO (median)
92/100
Lighthouse best practices (median)
88/100
Lighthouse agentic (median)
99/100
Words per page (median)
976 main content, nav excluded
Reading ease (median)
41 268 prose pages details
Reading grade (median)
14
Misspellings
25+ distinct details
Broken links
1200 details
Median page weight
1.8 MB +606 KB worse
Median requests per page
44
Estimated energy per page (mean)
0.4214 Wh

Note: page counts differ between weeks (4208 → 1609). Prefer the "pages affected" columns over raw instance counts when comparing.

Scan coverage this week (1609 pages · 1046 succeeded of 1524 attempted)
Pages each engine ran on, per the configured weekly sampling rates.
EnginePagesCoverage
axe104465%
resources77848%
plain-language53633%
standards52933%
alfa15510%
sustainability1379%
tech1046%
deprecated-html1026%
security996%
lighthouse956%

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

Changes since 2026-W39 17 change(s)

axe-core

  • Resolved: td-headers-attr no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: landmark-banner-is-top-level no longer fails on any scanned page.

Alfa

  • New: sia-r11 appeared this week.
  • Resolved: sia-r69 no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: sia-r77 no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: sia-r70 no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • sia-r61 shrank: 346 → 146 pages affected (rate: 92% → 94% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r57 shrank: 109 → 60 pages affected (rate: 29% → 39% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r66 shrank: 182 → 54 pages affected (rate: 48% → 35% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r53 shrank: 167 → 53 pages affected (rate: 44% → 34% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r74 shrank: 181 → 54 pages affected (rate: 48% → 35% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r14 shrank: 182 → 54 pages affected (rate: 48% → 35% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r113 shrank: 79 → 29 pages affected (rate: 21% → 19% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r78 shrank: 101 → 35 pages affected (rate: 27% → 23% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r2 shrank: 31 → 8 pages affected (rate: 8% → 5% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r4 shrank: 32 → 9 pages affected (rate: 8% → 6% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r64 shrank: 30 → 8 pages affected (rate: 8% → 5% 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 (816)

2440 distinct resources, by type.
TypeCount
PDF documents1593
Iframes482
Archives (zip, etc.)238
Spreadsheets101
Video files11
Word/text documents6
Images5
Presentations3
Audio files1