What’s behind the label “Top 5% accessible webpage”?

I recently read an article about the webpage that is ranked by WebAIM report in top 5% of accessible webpages - a homapage of the University of Utah. So I provided a short accessibility audit, using WAVE, HeadingsMap, Accessibility Insights for Web, keyboard testing and manual review.

What stood out to me was not the ranking itself, but what can be missed when we rely too heavily on automated testing and accessibility scores.

Automated tools are incredibly useful, but they cannot fully tell us what it is like to actually navigate and use a website - that’s why human accessibility testing still matters.

For me, the goal of accessibility should never be to be “in the top 5%” - it should be to make the web genuinely more accessible to the people who use it.

I recorded a my audit to share what I found and why I think we need to look beyond the numbers, here is a link to the full video:

I’d love to hear your thoughts: do you agree with WebAIM that this webpage stands in top 5% of accessible webpages?