Yes to Access

As part of the Yes to Access digital accessibility initiative, we evaluated 1,002 websites (as of 27th November 2025) to understand their accessibility for persons with disabilities. For this study, we used two tools:

WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool) and SATYA (Smart Accessibility Testing for Your Application) developed by CDAC.

We started with WAVE for the first 403 websites, and later shifted to SATYA because it provided deeper insights and more detailed reports, especially on WCAG and IS 17802 guideline violations.

What we found

• Out of the 403 websites assessed using WAVE, 248 websites had more than 20 accessibility errors
• When we switched to SATYA and assessed the remaining 599 websites, we found that 127 websites had over 500 accessibility violations, highlighting major gaps in how digital platforms are built and maintained, with 56 websites having more than 1000 violations.
• The most common violations were the absence of alternative text on the images, lack of contrasting colorsand non usage of live captioning in the website.

Types of websites assessed

These 1,002 websites represented a mix of sectors—government departments, banks and financial institutions, colleges and universities, corporate websites, NGOs, healthcare platforms, e-commerce sites, and various service-based portals.

In our journey of digital accessibility advocacy, we found that websites such as Apple and Dell were the ones which followed accessibility standards to the maximum extent.

Some features which are essential to adhere make an accessible website:

1. Alt text – It is an image description feature of a page to describe images and design elements.
2. Use of contrasting colors in the background and text
3. Use of live captioning in the plugged videos in the websites
4. Use of simple and intuitive design and absence of design clutter in the overlapping text

In this blog, we would like to appreciate the efforts of The Nudge Institute which has added accessibility toggle button in the website and IIT Kanpur which improved their accessibility score in the WAVE tool after our engagement