u/Bedelia_1212 — reddlx

Ran axe-core WCAG 2.1 AA audits on 43 products that launched on Product Hunt in April 2026. Same methodology for each one.

The numbers:

Average score: 5.6 / 100
Median score: 0
Pass rate: 2.3% (1 out of 43)
Total violations: 1,877 (~44 per site)
93% scored in the critical range (0 to 29)

One site passed: Offsite, 87/100 with 2 violations. Next best was 52. Then 50. Then it falls off a cliff to forty straight zeros.

What's breaking:

Color contrast failures (17 out of 43 sites)
Buttons with no discernible text (9 sites, icon-only, no aria-label)
Missing alt text (5 sites)
Invalid ARIA attributes (3 sites)
No visible focus indicator (2 sites)

Contrast alone accounts for failures on 40% of sites scanned.

The Tailwind thing: 60% of sites use Tailwind. Average design token coverage was 37.7%. Every single site had measurable component drift. Links were the worst, with sites showing 3 to 9 visual variants of what should be one component.

What would fix most of this in 15 minutes:

Run a contrast checker on your primary text colors
Add aria-label to every icon-only button
Add alt text to every image (decorative = alt="")
Tab through your entire site. If you lose focus, add :focus-visible styles

Full writeup with methodology and all 43 results: [link]

One prompt to design the dashboard, it had sidebar nav, KPI cards, charts, data table, calendar. Looked great in seconds. Then I actually checked it: - 33 design tokens declared, zero used.

It generated a full shadcn/ui token system on :root then hardcoded every value with Tailwind utilities. Charts invisible to screen readers. No aria-labels, no fallback tables and bad contrast.

I prompted it to fix everything. Went from 11 violations to 1. Then I asked for a dark theme + new chart type. 9 violations came back. The new donut chart got role="img" on each sector but no alt text. It learned the attribute, not the pattern. Same cycle I found with Google AI Studio on a simpler page. Different tool, same result tbf, and I have seen it across the board.

Full writeup with prompts and the audit report: Link

Not bashing Make but if you're shipping it, an accessibility pass isn't optional. Anyone else testing Make on complex layouts?