Skill, Will, or Both? Understanding Digital Inaccessibility from Accessibility Professionals' Viewpoint
Abstract
Digital inaccessibility continues to be a significant barrier to true inclusion and equality. WebAIM's 2024 report reveals that only 4.1% of the world's top one million website homepages are fully accessible. Furthermore, the percentage of web pages with detectable Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) failures has only decreased by 1.9\% over the past five years, from 97.8%. To gain deeper insights into the persistent challenges of digital accessibility, we conducted a comprehensive survey with 160 accessibility professionals. Unlike previous studies, which often focused on technology professionals, our research examines inaccessibility through the lens of dedicated accessibility professionals, offering a more detailed analysis of the barriers they face. Our investigation explores (a) organizations' willingness to prioritize accessibility, (b) the challenges in ensuring accessibility, and (c) the current accessibility training practices in technology workspaces. This study aims to provide an updated perspective on the state of digital accessibility from the point of view of accessibility professionals.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2509.23287,
title = {Skill, Will, or Both? Understanding Digital Inaccessibility from Accessibility Professionals' Viewpoint},
author = {P D Parthasarathy and Rachel F. Adler and Devorah Kletenik and Swaroop Joshi and Anshu M Mittal},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.23287},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
Accepted and published at Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '25), April 26-May 1, 2025, Yokohama, Japan