I'm 15, and I recently built an accessibility scanner that checks websites against WCAG 2.2 standards. To stress-test it, I decided to scan the websites of 10 UK web development agencies — the companies that build websites for a living.
The setup
I ran a single-page scan (homepage only) on each agency's site using axe-core, checking against 90+ WCAG 2.2 rules. No full crawls — just the home page.
The results were as follows:
Agency A: 8 violations (2 critical, 5 serious)
Agency B: 8 violations (2 critical, 3 serious)
Agency C: 8 violations (1 critical, 2 serious)
Agency D: 7 violations (2 critical, 2 serious)
Agency E: 5 violations (2 critical, 2 serious)
Agency F: 5 violations (0 critical, 1 serious)
Agency G: 4 violations (0 critical, 1 serious)
Agency H: 4 violations (0 critical, 1 serious)
Agency I: 2 violations (0 critical, 1 serious)
Agency J: 0 violations — clean pass
9 out of 10 failed. Only one agency had a completely clean homepage.
Totals across all 10 sites:
51 violations
9 critical
18 serious
21 moderate
3 minor
The most common violations
Colour contrast failures — showed up on 5 out of 10 sites. Text that doesn't meet the minimum contrast ratio against its background. This is the single most common accessibility issue on the web, and agencies are no exception.
Links without discernible text — 5 out of 10 sites. Screen readers can't tell users where a link goes if it has no accessible name. Usually caused by icon links or image links with no alt text.
Missing lang attribute — 2 out of 10 sites didn't declare a language on their HTML element. This tells screen readers which language to use for pronunciation. Takes 10 seconds to fix.
Zooming disabled — 2 out of 10 sites used meta viewport settings that prevent users from zooming in. This is a critical violation because it blocks people with low vision from enlarging text.
Images without alt text — one agency had 272 images on their homepage with no alt text. Two hundred and seventy-two.
Why this matters
These are the companies businesses hire to build their websites. If their own sites don't pass basic accessibility checks, what does that say about the sites they're building for clients?
This isn't about shaming anyone — most of these are easy fixes. But with accessibility lawsuits increasing every year (8,600+ ADA lawsuits in 2025, with ecommerce sites being the primary target), it's worth paying attention to.
94.8% of websites fail basic accessibility checks according to WebAIM's 2025 report. Agencies aren't immune.
What I built
I built the scanner as a side project called Vía. It scans websites for WCAG 2.2 violations, ranks them by legal risk, explains each one in plain English, and generates AI-powered code fixes.
Not an overlay widget — actual code changes you can copy and implement.
Free to try on any site: viascan.dev
Would love to hear from other devs — do you check accessibility before shipping client work? What tools do you use? What's missing from the current options?
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