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We conducted an automated web accessibility diagnostic survey of the official website homepages of 90 local governments in total: 47 prefectures, 20 ordinance-designated cities, and 23 Tokyo wards. The survey used the automated web accessibility diagnostic tool Lente Scan.
As a result, accessibility issues were detected on the homepages of 87 local governments (96.7%), within the scope that automated diagnostics can determine. The median number of detected issues per page was 18.5, with the municipality having the most issues showing 146 detected problems.
Survey Results Summary
- Issues were detected across all categories, exceeding 90%.
The percentage of municipalities where issues were detected was 97.9% for prefectures, 100% for ordinance-designated cities, and 91.3% for Tokyo's 23 wards. The same types of implementation issues were repeatedly detected across multiple municipalities, suggesting that implementation patterns widely used in web development practices are influencing the results. - The most common was success criterion 4.1.2 "Name, Role, Value" at 92.2%.
This criterion addresses whether the names and roles of UI elements such as buttons and links are properly conveyed to assistive technologies including screen readers. The next most common was 1.3.1 "Info and Relationships" at 63.3%. Note that criterion 4.1.2 has a broad scope and tends to show high detection rates. - Among individual items, "Link destination with javascript:" was the most frequent.
It was detected in 74 municipalities (82.2%) with a total of 724 instances. In this survey, this item is classified in the lightest category of "minor," and the high frequency indicates the widespread use of this implementation rather than its severity.
Limitations of This Survey
Automated diagnostics can evaluate only about 30-40% of WCAG success criteria. The figures in this survey are limited to that scope and do not evaluate the overall accessibility of individual municipal websites. Only aggregate totals are published; individual municipal diagnostic results are not disclosed. The remaining areas and items that cannot be determined by automated diagnostics alone require manual verification.
Survey Methodology
- Target: Official website homepages (1 page each) of 90 municipalities comprising 47 prefectures, 20 designated cities, and 23 special wards of Tokyo
- Survey date: September 11, 2026
- Evaluation standard: WCAG 2.2 Level AA
- Diagnostic engine: axe-core 4.11.4, Lente Detect 1.6.5 (evaluated at both desktop equivalent 1280px and mobile equivalent 320px widths)
Survey report
Detailed survey results, including aggregation by compliance criteria and detected issues, as well as survey conditions, are published in the report below.
https://www.liberogic.jp/survey/municipality/2026-09-11/report-public.html
"Lente Scan," the tool used in this survey, is a web accessibility diagnostic tool that automatically assesses accessibility simply by entering a URL. Registration-free and free to use, it evaluates your website using the same diagnostic engine and criteria as this survey (the free version performs diagnostics at desktop width only; diagnostics including mobile width are available with the Pro plan).
https://lente-scan.liberogic.jp/
Areas requiring human review are handled through expert manual diagnostics
For areas beyond the scope of automated diagnostics, we provide web accessibility manual diagnostic services with a team centered on IAAP-certified Web Accessibility Specialists (WAS). Diagnostics use our proprietary workspace "Lente Audit," enabling unified handling from sharing findings through remediation coordination to report issuance.
