vital-scans open quality ledger

www.medicare.gov: week 2026-W34

This is the 2026-W34 ISO-week report (1977 pages fetched, 1927 unique pages audited by axe/Alfa). Generated 2026-08-20. Compared against 2026-W33 (1977 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: 6 required finding type(s) (handling: review). Aspirational queue: 0 finding type(s). Advisory queue: 0 finding type(s). Unmapped review queue: 5 finding type(s).

New this week
0
Fixed this week
1
Regressed this week
0

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
All page content should be contained by landmarks (WCAG criterion undetermined) (rule↗) Serious 1677 — Wrap all page content in landmarks (header, nav, main, footer) so users can navigate by region. pages (CSV)
Target size is at least 44×44 CSS pixels (Enhanced) (WCAG 2.5.5) (rule↗) Moderate 488 — 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)
aria-hidden element does not contain focusable elements (WCAG 4.1.2) (rule↗) Moderate 421 Without vision, Limited vision See remediation guidance: https://alfa.siteimprove.com/rules/sia-r17 pages (CSV)
Scrolling content can be accessed by keyboard (WCAG criterion undetermined) (rule↗) Moderate 427 — See remediation guidance: https://alfa.siteimprove.com/rules/sia-r57 pages (CSV)
Table header has scope (WCAG criterion undetermined) (rule↗) Moderate 140 — See remediation guidance: https://alfa.siteimprove.com/rules/sia-r78 pages (CSV)
Heading levels should only increase by one (WCAG criterion undetermined) (rule↗) Moderate 40 — Use heading levels in order (h1 → h2 → h3) without skipping; structure, not size. pages (CSV)
Text has enhanced contrast (WCAG 1.4.6) (rule↗) Moderate 29 — Increase text contrast to meet WCAG AAA (7:1). pages (CSV)

Progress

Open findings by severity over 11 weeks (lower is better)
Serious Moderate Minor W24W29W34170

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 19 issue type(s)
Median axe violations / page
2
Pages with axe violations
1677 of 1927
Median Alfa failures / page
53
Pages with Alfa failures
488 of 488
Unique pages audited
1927
Lighthouse performance (median)
41/100 193 sampled details
Lighthouse SEO (median)
92/100
Lighthouse best practices (median)
54/100
Lighthouse agentic (median)
100/100
Words per page (median)
199 main content, nav excluded
Reading ease (median)
40.4 599 prose pages
Reading grade (median)
14
Misspellings
25+ distinct details
Broken links
30 details
Median page weight
7.3 MB +69 KB worse
Median requests per page
111
Estimated energy per page (mean)
2.2997 Wh
Scan coverage this week (1977 pages · 2215 succeeded of 2226 attempted)
Pages each engine ran on, per the configured weekly sampling rates.
EnginePagesCoverage
axe192797%
resources192797%
standards98050%
plain-language96749%
alfa48825%
sustainability21111%
security20710%
lighthouse19310%
tech19310%
deprecated-html1719%

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

Changes since 2026-W33 4 change(s)

axe-core

No rule-level changes.

Alfa

  • Resolved: sia-r80 no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • Resolved: sia-r18 no longer fails on any scanned page.
  • sia-r78 spread: 125 → 140 pages affected (rate: 26% → 29% of pages scanned).
  • sia-r57 spread: 403 → 427 pages affected (rate: 84% → 88% 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 (198)

1506 distinct resources, by type.
TypeCount
PDF documents1250
Iframes200
Audio files54
Images1
Archives (zip, etc.)1