Infographic titled ‘6 simple ADA mistakes bots catch in seconds.’ It lists six common web accessibility issues in two columns: low contrast text, missing alt text, missing form labels, empty links, empty buttons, and missing language. Footer states that 96% of ADA issues come from these mistakes. © Jocelio Ferreira (LLB) workflowstudio.org 2026.

6 Digital ADA Mistakes That Are Easy for Bots to Catch

by Jocelio Ferreira

PUBLISHED MAR 23, 2026

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life. For example, if a person with a disability cannot access a physical public space, this is considered discrimination. Today, the ADA also applies to digital access. If someone with a disability cannot access digital content, it is likewise considered discrimination.

The Legal Context First

Automated tools catch roughly 30% of WCAG issues Accessibility, but that 30% is enough to get institutions sued. Serial plaintiffs and their attorneys identify non-compliant sites using automated scanning tools and file volume complaints. Accessibility And the threat is growing: AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini are now enabling individuals without legal representation to draft and file complaints, with federal pro se ADA Title III lawsuits increasing 40% in 2025 compared to 2024. Accessible

The "Big 6" — What Bots Catch Most

According to the 2025 WebAIM Million report (the gold standard study, analyzing 1 million websites), 94.8% of home pages had detected WCAG 2 failures. WebAIM Crucially, 96.4% of all errors detected fall into just six categories — and these have been the same for the last 5 years. HeX Productions Here they are:

1. 🔴 Low Contrast Text — Found on 79% of pages

Low contrast text, below the WCAG 2 AA thresholds, was found on 79.1% of home pages — the most commonly detected accessibility issue. On average, each home page had nearly 30 distinct instances of low-contrast text. WebAIM Bots measure the exact color ratio between text and background. WCAG requires a 4.5:1 ratio for normal text and 3:1 for large text. This is one of the easiest violations for scanners to flag automatically.

2. 🔴 Missing Alternative Text for Images — Found on 55.5% of pages

LAlt-text on images was missing on 55.5% of home pages — an increase from the previous year. An average of 11 images per page were missing alt-text. Creative-boost This is critical for blind users who rely on screen readers. Bots simply look for the alt attribute in image HTML tags. 44% of the images missing alternative text were linked images — resulting in links that were not descriptive. One out of every five linked images was missing alternative text. WebAIM

3. 🔴 Missing Form Input Labels — One of the top 6 persistent failures

48.6% of websites had missing form input labels. BOIA Every form field (name, email, phone, search boxes) must have a programmatic label so screen readers can announce the field's purpose. Without it, a blind user hears "edit text" with no context. Bots check this instantly by reading the HTML structure.

4. 🔴 Empty Links (Links with No Descriptive Text) — Found on ~44% of pages

44.6% of websites had empty hyperlinks. BOIA These are links where the clickable text gives no indication of destination — like "click here," "more," or links that are just icons with no label. Ambiguous link text such as "click here," "more," or "continue" was found on almost 14% of home pages — an increase from 2024. Creative-boost Bots flag these because they directly harm screen reader users who navigate by links.

5. 🔴 Empty Buttons — Found on ~30% of pages

Empty buttons were found on almost 30% of pages — an increase from the prior year. This means blind or low-vision users cannot understand the purpose of buttons like submit, reset, filter, or search. Creative-boost This is extremely common with icon-only buttons (like a magnifying glass for search or an "X" to close a modal) that have no text or ARIA label attached.

6. 🔴 Missing Document Language — Found on ~16% of pages

About 16% of pages were missing a set document language. The page language is important so that web browsers display characters correctly, and so screen reader users get content voiced in the correct language. Creative-boost This is a single line of HTML (<html lang="en">) that many developers forget, and bots catch it instantly.

Other Bot-Detectable Issues Worth Mentioning

Beyond the Big 6, scanners also flag these reliably:

Improper table markup — Only about 17% of tables were properly coded, meaning users of assistive technology may not be able to understand the contents. Creative-boost

Missing skip navigation links — Only about 13% of home pages had a skip link — a decrease from previous years. Creative-boost Skip links let keyboard-only users jump past repetitive navigation to get to the main content.

Misused ARIA — Approximately 79% of evaluated home pages used ARIA, and pages with ARIA had more than twice as many errors as pages without it. Many developers think they are making content more accessible by adding ARIA, when in fact they often make it less so. Creative-boost

Missing page titles and heading structure — Bots check that pages have meaningful <title> tags and that headings (H1, H2, H3) are used in logical, hierarchical order rather than skipped or misused for visual styling.

A Key Warning for Institutions

22.6% of websites that were sued for ADA violations had an accessibility overlay widget installed at the time they were sued. OnePageAudit Tools like accessiBe or UserWay are often marketed as "quick fixes," but the FTC reached a $1 million settlement in 2025 with a prominent overlay provider for misleading businesses about what their widget could actually do. Accessibility Overlays do not fix underlying code — bots still find the violations underneath.

Upcoming Deadline for Public Institutions

This is especially urgent for government and educational entities: public entities with populations of 50,000 or more face an April 24, 2026 compliance deadline under the new ADA Title II web accessibility rule. Once that deadline passes, plaintiffs' lawyers will have clear legal grounds to sue state and local governments that haven't made their websites and mobile apps WCAG 2.1 AA conformant.

References

WebAIM Million Report 2025 WebAIM (Web Accessibility In Mind). The WebAIM Million: An accessibility analysis of the top 1,000,000 home pages. Utah State University Center for Persons with Disabilities. 🔗 https://webaim.org/projects/million/
U.S. Department of Justice — ADA Title II Web Accessibility Final Rule U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division. Accessibility of Web Information and Services of State and Local Government Entities (Title II Final Rule). Federal Register, 2024. 🔗 https://www.ada.gov/resources/2024-03-08-web-accessibility-rule/
FTC Settlement with Accessibility Overlay Provider (2025) Federal Trade Commission. FTC Action Against Accessibility Overlay Company for Deceptive Claims. 2025. 🔗 https://www.ftc.gov
W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. W3C Recommendation. 🔗 https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/
UsableNet ADA Web Accessibility Lawsuit Report 2024–2025 UsableNet Inc. ADA Digital Accessibility Lawsuits: Mid-Year and Annual Reports. 🔗 https://usablenet.com/resources
axe by Deque Systems — Automated Accessibility Testing Deque Systems. axe: Accessibility Testing Tools and Software. 🔗 https://www.deque.com/axe/
WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool WebAIM. WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool. 🔗 https://wave.webaim.org/
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act — U.S. Access Board U.S. Access Board. Section 508 Standards for Electronic and Information Technology. 🔗 https://www.access-board.gov/ict/
AI-Generated ADA Complaints Rise — Pro Se Filers Trend Referenced in legal industry coverage, 2025. Source: accessibility and legal trade publications monitoring federal court filings related to ADA Title III digital accessibility.

About the Research Assistant

Claude by Anthropic This article's framework, data synthesis, and reference organization were supported by Claude (model: Claude Sonnet 4.6), an AI assistant developed by Anthropic, PBC. Anthropic is an AI safety company founded in 2021, headquartered in San Francisco, California. Conversation date: March 23, 2026. 🔗 https://www.anthropic.com | https://claude.ai

© Jocelio Ferreira (LLB) — workflowstudio.org — 2026
Editorial note: All statistics cited in this article are drawn from publicly available reports and studies. Readers are encouraged to verify links directly, as URLs may be updated by their respective organizations. The AI assistant (Claude) was used for research synthesis and framework structuring — all editorial decisions remain with the author.
This article was developed with the assistance of ChatGPT as part of an AI-assisted writing workflow. All content was reviewed, edited, and approved by the author.

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