Industry Benchmark: Which New Zealand web agencies take accessibility seriously?

Accessibility score by site

Of the 27 agencies we tested, only four received a “good” accessibility score of 90 or above. More surprising was the fact that nearly half of the agencies received a “poor” score of less than 70, with the worst-performing agency having over 240 critical accessibility issues on their website.

1. 1 Silverstripe Score: 96
2. 2 Somar Digital Score: 93
3. 3 Fahrenheit Digital Score: 92
4. 4 Squiz Score: 92
5. 5 Signify Score: 89
6. 6 Catch Design Score: 88
7. 7 Cucumber Score: 87
8. 8 DNA Score: 87
9. 9 NV Interactive Score: 87
10. 10 Catalyst IT Score: 85
11. 11 Springload Score: 84
12. 12 Assurity Score: 79
13. 13 Voco Score: 75
14. 14 RUSH Score: 71
15. 15 Octave Score: 71
16. 16 Terabyte Interactive Score: 63
17. 17 Webstruxure Score: 58
18. 18 Fronde Score: 56
19. 19 Sysdoc Score: 54
20. 20 Designworks Score: 48
21. 21 Toast Score: 42
22. 22 Satellite Score: 34
23. 23 Equinox IT Score: 33
24. 24 Dynamo6 Score: 30
25. 25 Theta Score: 29
26. 26 Tangerine Design Score: 27
27. 27 Datacom Score: 21

The podium

While no agency scored a perfect 100, the four that share the podium all scored above 90, which is reassuring to see. We performed extra manual testing on these four sites - read on to see our findings.

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Silverstripe

silverstripe.com

Score 96 Good

Pages scanned 66

Issues found 27

Pages by score

Page scores: 53 good, 13 needs improvement, 0 poor

Silverstripe came out on top with just 27 issues across all of their pages, and no critical issues. During our manual testing we were happy to see that they got the basics right, although we were disappointed that the skip link did not function on most pages. Dialogs on the 'Meet the team' page also did not capture focus correctly, which was frustrating as a keyboard user. Screen reader support was good, with sensible landmarks and labels.

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Somar Digital

somar.co.nz

Score 93 Good

Pages scanned 62

Issues found 52

Pages by score

Page scores: 43 good, 19 needs improvement, 0 poor

Manual testing showed that Somar Digital put accessibility first with clear focus state, good labelling, and well thought out interactive components. Their accessibility score was only let down by some colour contrast issues on small text, as well as one unlabelled form element which appears to be a genuine frontend bug. Screen reader support was good, although more content landmarks would have made pages easier to navigate.

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Fahrenheit Digital

fahrenheit.co.nz

Score 92 Good

Pages scanned 42

Issues found 41

Pages by score

Page scores: 32 good, 10 needs improvement, 0 poor

Fahrenheit Digital's website is a good case study for where automated accessibility testing can miss key issues. A11y Pulse caught some valid issues, like using <a> instead of <button>. It was only during manual testing that we found the site was virtually inaccessible to keyboard users due to a navigation with no tab index. Screen reader support was also poor, with convoluted markup causing simple text to be announced as nested groups and carousel content lacking meaningful labels.

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Squiz

squiz.net

Score 92 Good

Pages scanned 47

Issues found 90

Pages by score

Page scores: 36 good, 10 needs improvement, 1 poor

Squiz impressed us with an incredibly well-built site. Our manual testing found no obvious issues, which is reassuring given that Squiz tout their own commitment to accessibility. Their score was only let down by a large number of 'easy fix' issues such as non-hierarchical heading elements. Screen reader support was excellent and all pages were easy to navigate.

The lowest-scoring sites

Just like we did for the podium websites, we also performed manual testing on the three lowest-scoring sites. We thought the low scores were justified, although we were surprised to find that the worst-performing site was actually more usable than its score implied.

Theta

theta.co.nz

29 Poor

Pages scanned 75

Total Issues 503

Critical Issues 36

Severity breakdown

• Critical 36
• Serious 229
• Moderate 238
• Minor 0

During manual testing we noted that Theta's website was mostly accessible for keyboard users, but poor structure and lack of landmarks made screen reader use extremely difficult. Colour contrast was a consistent issue, with important information such as dates and titles being hard to read. While Theta does have a large number of accessibility issues, many of them would be reasonably easy to address and would go a long way to improving their site's usability.

Tangerine Design

tangerine.co.nz

27 Poor

Pages scanned 43

Total Issues 292

Critical Issues 37

Severity breakdown

• Critical 37
• Serious 111
• Moderate 144
• Minor 0

Tangerine Design got a few basics right such as a skip link and keyboard-accessible navigation, however there were some visual design choices that made other parts of their website completely inaccessible to keyboard users. Screen reader support was a mixed bag, with VoiceOver on Firefox reading every element as 'clickable' and VoiceOver on Safari being unable to read any of the content on the page. Tangerine's website needs some significant structural improvements to be accessible to all users.

Datacom

datacom.com

21 Poor

Pages scanned 95

Total Issues 713

Critical Issues 247

Severity breakdown

• Critical 247
• Serious 145
• Moderate 222
• Minor 99

It was not possible to navigate around Datacom's website with a keyboard or screen reader because their navigation uses <div> elements where <button> or <a> should have been used. The content that we were able to test with a screen reader was in poor shape: lack of landmarks made navigation difficult, and no alternative text on images made the reading experience extremely painful. While A11y Pulse did find many valid issues, the single biggest failing of Datacom's website was that nobody tested their navigation with assistive technologies before launch.

The most commonly failed audits

The table below shows the 10 most common issues that A11y Pulse found across all the websites we tested. If you read our manual testing notes, these issues won’t come as any surprise - the majority of issues that we found were related to poor content structure and colour contrast.

1. 1 Heading levels should only increase by one ? Headings convey page structure for screen reader users the same way text size does for sighted users. Properly ordered headings (h1 through h6) allow screen reader users to quickly navigate and understand content structure, saving significant time and frustration while also improving search engine optimization.
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2. 2 Elements must meet minimum color contrast ratio thresholds ? People with low vision or color blindness cannot read text that lacks sufficient contrast with its background. With nearly three times more people having low vision than total blindness, and 8% of men and 0.4% of women having color deficiencies, adequate contrast is essential for making text readable to millions of users.
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3. 3 Links must have discernible text ? Keyboard users and screen reader users can only interact with links that have accessible names and can receive focus. Without proper names, users don't know where links lead. Without keyboard focus, users who cannot use a mouse cannot activate the links at all.
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4. 4 All page content should be contained by landmarks ? Content should be organized within high-level landmark regions like <header>, <navigation>, <main>, and <footer>. Content outside these sections is difficult to find and its purpose may be unclear, making navigation inefficient for screen reader users who rely on landmarks to understand page structure.
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5. 5 Headings should not be empty ? Screen readers announce headings to help users navigate page structure. Empty headings confuse users and prevent them from understanding the page's organization. Headings should only be used to convey structure, not for visual styling, and must contain accessible text that screen readers can announce.
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6. 6 Landmarks should have a unique role or role/label/title (i.e. accessible name) combination ? Each landmark on a page must have either a unique role or a unique accessible name. Duplicate landmarks confuse screen reader users about which section they're navigating to, making it difficult to efficiently move through the page structure.
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7. 7 Page should contain a level-one heading ? Screen reader users use keyboard shortcuts to jump directly to the first h1, expecting to land at the main content. Without an h1 or with a misplaced one, users must listen to more of the page to understand its structure, wasting valuable time on every page visit.
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8. 8 Frames must have an accessible name ? Screen reader users rely on frame titles to understand frame content without exploring each one. Without descriptive, unique titles, users receive unhelpful information like "frame," "JavaScript," or URLs, making navigation through frames difficult and confusing.
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9. 9 Document should have one main landmark ? Every page should have exactly one main landmark that identifies the primary content. Without a main landmark, screen reader users must navigate through all content linearly to find what they're looking for, making page navigation difficult and time-consuming.
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10. 10 Images must have alternative text ? Screen readers cannot translate images into text without alt attributes. Alternative text is essential for blind users and beneficial for users with low vision or color blindness, providing the same information that sighted users get from viewing the image.
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