Five 2022 accessibility trends

TL;DR — More of the same, with a few notable differences

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These are my accessibility predictions for 2022.

Prediction 1: The web will slowly continue to become more accessible

The two annual accessibility reports — SOAR and the WebAIM million showed slight improvements in web accessibility, but the overall rate of inaccessibility is still pretty atrocious.

• In 2021, WebAIM noted that 97.4% of home pages had detected WCAG 2 failures, down slightly from 98.1% in February 2020. That means the web should be accessible some time in the 2070s or 2080s if this rate continues.
• The SOAR report, which looks more closely at registration processes and does some manual testing, found that out of the Alexa 100 websites tested, 62% were accessible to screen readers, up from 40% in 2020.

So there are two trends here:

1. Larger companies, which are more likely to be sued because of their deep pockets and more likely to have DEI groups, ERGs, and budgets because of their size, are becoming accessible more quickly.
2. Smaller companies with fewer resources are at the rear of the accessibility pack.

Smaller companies can still get sued. This leads us to prediction #2.

Prediction #2: Digital accessibility lawsuits will continue to increase

2021 showed an expected continued increase in litigation, with more than 4000 lawsuits filed. The only question is whether limitations in such litigation being reviewed in New York and Florida courts, two of the most popular jurisdictions for such lawsuits, will keep that number from hitting 5000 in 2022.