Site Accessibility for 2020 Presidential Candidates

20 min read

By Ashley Burns Published: Nov 5, 2019

Header image with the words: "Which presidential candidate's website is the most accessible," along with a wheelchair icon image and the Promet Sourcelogo

A list of the presidential candidates based on the accessibility of their sites, along with images concerning the candidate's sites. Explanatory text follows the infographic.

Based on our conviction at Promet Source that web accessibility matters, we evaluated the websites of leading Republican and Democratic 2020 presidential candidates for accessibility. The web.dev scans were conducted on November 4, 2019, and the above infographic offers a glimpse into how the candidates' websites rank in terms of accessibility factors that include keyboard navigation, use of ARIA assistive technologies, semantic markup support, and the presence of alternative text on images.

The scans revealed an average site accessibility score of 67 for Republican candidates of and 86 for the Democratic candidates (out of a possible score of 100). This is depicted with an outlined image of an elephant that's 69% filled in with red and an outline of a donkey that's 87% filled in with blue.

The candidates' accessibility scores are depicted as a horizontal bars with directional, racing imagery, each with the forward momentum icon of the person in a wheelchair.

Horizontal blue bars for nine Democratic candidates are depicted, followed by four red bars for Republican candidates. Among the Democratic candidates, Cory Booker ranked the highest with a score of 99; followed by Julian Castro (96); Bernie Sanders (94); Elizabeth Warren (93); Kamala Harris (92); Joe Biden (90); Andrew Yang (89); Pete Buttigieg (64); and Amy Klobuchar (60). Among Republican candidates, Joe Walsh ranked the highest with a web.dev score of 87, followed by Bill Weld (78); Mark Sanford (74); and Donald Trump (27).

Three outlined or partially outlined circles follow the bar chart. The first one is 100% outlined in red indicating that 100% of the candidates' websites from both parties have a DONATE button on the home page. The second circle is 29% outlined in red with a caption indicating that's the percentage of websites that have dual language capabilities. The third circle is 21% outlined, indicating that the percentage of 2020 presidential candidate sites that have alt-text on images.

Curious about the degree to which your site measures up to current accessibility standards? Go to web.dev to run it through an accessibility scan, and contact us today for a conversation about getting your site into compliance.