You may have noticed a change in your accessibility score recently, and that’s a good thing.
We’ve introduced a more accurate way to measure accessibility. This updated scoring model gives you clearer insights, helps you prioritize the most important fixes, and tracks your progress over time more effectively.
So… why did my score change?
Don’t worry! It doesn’t mean your website suddenly became less accessible. We’ve upgraded the algorithm that calculates your accessibility score to reflect the true impact of accessibility issues on real users. The updated score may be a little stricter, but it’s also much more meaningful.
Your old accessibility scores are now shown in grey, because they used our previous model. Just rerun your scans to see your up-to-date score.
What’s different about the new scoring model?
We’ve moved from a component-based system to a rule-based scoring system. We made this switch because some sites were getting high scores by passing lots of small checks, while critical accessibility issues were still present. Now, the score reflects what truly matters:
- Each accessibility rule is checked on your pages
- Issues are weighted by severity (so critical problems have more impact)
- Your score rewards progress but keeps the focus on real user needs
Read more about how scoring works in our documentation
A closer look: How your score is calculated
Your Accessibility Score now has two layers:
Page Score
Each page gets a score based on which rules it passed or failed. And the severity of each issue. Here is a table that shows how critical rules, if passed, are rewarded with the highest weight. And if they fail, they are penalized 2X.
| Severity | Passed Rule Weight | Failed Rule Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | 10 | 20 |
| Serious | 7 | 14 |
| Moderate | 3 | 6 |
| Minor | 1 | 2 |
Rules that fail are weighted more heavily; here’s why.
Failed rules are penalized more than passed rules are rewarded, and that’s intentional. That’s because in accessibility, a single critical issue can have outsized consequences. For example:
- One missing keyboard focus trap can prevent a screen reader user from progressing through a page.
- One unlabelled form field can make it impossible for someone using assistive tech to complete a signup flow.
- One blocked gesture can stop a user with motor disabilities from accessing a key action.
So while it’s important to recognize what’s working (passed rules), it’s more important to penalize what’s broken (failed rules), especially when it actively prevents users from accessing your product.
This helps to take into account what’s working well, and it helps you identify what needs to be prioritized to be fixed. You can deep dive and understand the calculations in our documentation.
Overall Accessibility Scan Score
The Scan Score is a high-level summary of your site's overall accessibility health. It’s calculated as the weighted average of rules passed and failed from all pages.
Let’s keep building a more inclusive web, together
We’re excited to bring you this upgrade. To get your updated scores, you can rerun your existing scans and check your new scores. Based on the score, you can focus on the issues that matter most, track real improvement over time, and meet accessibility standards with confidence
This helps you stay ahead of evolving global accessibility regulations—something that’s becoming more important for all accessibility teams. It’s designed to help you deliver better digital experiences for everyone—and give you the insights you need to keep improving.
Keep in mind, a high score doesn’t guarantee that your product is fully accessible. Automated testing surfaces many important issues in faster iterations, but you still need manual testing to ensure complete coverage.
Learn more in our documentation
Thank you for trusting us to guide your accessibility journey. This upgrade is a step forward for your team, for your users, and for the web.
