Benchmarks voor webtoegankelijkheid (2026): rechtszaken, naleving en het faalpercentage

The short version: 95.9 percent of the web's top home pages carry a detectable WCAG failure, and web accessibility lawsuits in US courts passed 4,900 in 2025, close to 70 percent of them aimed at ecommerce. The European Accessibility Act now carries fines reaching seven figures in some countries. Most businesses now face a measurable, priced risk, not a hypothetical one.

A note before the numbers, stated once and plainly: every figure here is compiled from published, third-party research, never the studio's own data or an original dataset, and each is flagged to re-verify before this piece publishes. None of this is legal advice: a lawsuit trend is not a legal opinion about any one site.

How many home pages actually fail an accessibility check?

Nearly all of them. WebAIM's 2026 scan of the top one million home pages found detectable WCAG 2 failures on 95.9 percent of pages, up from 94.8 percent in 2025, the first year in seven to get worse rather than better (WebAIM, to re-verify). The average page carried 56.1 distinct errors, a 10.1 percent jump from 51 the year before, which WebAIM ties to page complexity: the average home page now ships 1,437 elements, 22.5 percent more than a year earlier.

The failures cluster hard. WebAIM found 96 percent of all detected errors fall into just six recurring categories, the same six for seven years running:

• Low contrast text: 83.9 percent of home pages, up from 79.1 percent.
• Missing alternative text on images: 53.1 percent.
• Unlabeled form inputs: 51 percent, up from 48.2 percent.
• Empty links (no accessible text): 46.3 percent.
• Empty buttons: 30.6 percent.
• Missing document language attribute: 13.5 percent, down from 15.8 percent.

Contrast and unlabeled forms worsened year over year, while alt text and document language improved slightly.

How many web accessibility lawsuits were actually filed in 2025?

More than any prior year, though the exact count depends on who is counting. UsableNet, tracking both federal and state filings, put the full-year 2025 total at 4,928 digital accessibility lawsuits (UsableNet, to re-verify). EcomBack's tracker counted 3,948, up 23.84 percent from 2024's 3,188 (EcomBack, to re-verify). In federal courts alone, Seyfarth Shaw's year-end review found 3,117 website accessibility lawsuits in 2025, a 27 percent rise on 2024's 2,452, or 36 percent of all 8,667 ADA Title III federal filings that year (Seyfarth Shaw, to re-verify).

Quick caution so the numbers read correctly: these figures are not contradicting each other, they are measuring different scopes. UsableNet's count is broadest (federal plus state), EcomBack's methodology narrows the field somewhat, and Seyfarth Shaw's federal-only number is the most conservative and tied most directly to primary court dockets. All three agree filings rose sharply in 2025, after a similar surge in 2024. Litigation is also increasingly repeat business: UsableNet found 45 percent of 2025's federal cases named a company already sued once before, 1,427 companies in total.

Why does ecommerce keep getting sued?

Because it is the easiest target to prove: a shopper who cannot complete a purchase has a concrete, demonstrable harm. UsableNet found ecommerce accounted for close to 70 percent of all digital accessibility lawsuits in 2025, and among the top 500 ecommerce retailers by revenue, 35.8 percent received at least one ADA accessibility lawsuit that year (UsableNet, to re-verify).

(All figures to re-verify at source before publish.)

What does an audit and remediation actually cost?

Less than a lawsuit, in almost every case. TestParty's 2025 pricing research puts a typical manual audit with expert review at $3,000 to $15,000 for most business websites, and enterprise-level assessments at $15,000 to $75,000 or more (TestParty, to re-verify). The audit is usually the smaller line item: TestParty puts remediation at 70 to 80 percent of total project cost, the audit closer to 10 to 20 percent, so a $10,000 audit often precedes $50,000 to $100,000 of remediation work. Given WebAIM's average of 56 errors per home page, that range tracks with what an honest audit tends to surface.

What can the European Accessibility Act actually fine a business?

More than most businesses expect, and the ceiling varies sharply by country. The Directive itself sets no fine amount. It requires each transposed national law to make penalties "effective, proportionate and dissuasive," leaving the actual figures to each country (WebYes, to re-verify). Reported statutory maximums:

Quick caution, in the same spirit as the litigation numbers above. A widely repeated figure puts France's penalty at €250,000 per breach. Auditsu's April 2026 review traced that number back and found it "does not appear anywhere in the Directive," instead "originating from vendor marketing materials and compliance tool websites" (Auditsu, to re-verify). France's real ceiling is the €7,500 and €15,000 above, plus the possibility of a product being withdrawn from sale. Both numbers circulate online. Only one traces to the actual law. The Act took effect on 28 June 2025, and enforcement is still early: private legal action in France and warning letters in Germany are the confirmed activity so far, with no verified EAA-specific fine yet reported in most member states as of this writing.

What this means for a business weighing risk against opportunity

Read together, the numbers describe a market where the baseline is broken and the cost of being noticed is rising. Almost every competitor's home page fails a WCAG check somewhere, so accessibility is not yet a crowded differentiator. It also means the businesses getting sued are not unlucky outliers: they are disproportionately ecommerce operations carrying the same six recurring failures WebAIM has tracked for seven straight years. None of the six require a redesign. All are fixable in a focused engineering pass, for a fraction of what a single lawsuit or an EAA penalty at the upper end would cost.

The opportunity side is just as real. A site built right the first time never enters the remediation math at all, and it earns the same audience, search and AI-answer visibility, and conversion lift that inaccessible competitors are leaving on the table. Orchestrating accessibility alongside visibility and conversion, rather than bolting it on after a demand letter arrives, is the cheaper path by every figure in this piece.