Lumi vs WAVE: We Found 35% More Accessibility Issues
Most accessibility scanners run a single engine. WAVE by WebAIM is one of the most popular - it's free, visual, and trusted. But it only checks one page at a time with one rule set.
We built Lumi with five scanning engines specifically to catch what single-engine tools miss. To prove it, we ran side-by-side scans on 20 real websites.
The results
Across 20 websites, Lumi found an average of 35% more unique accessibility issues than WAVE alone. On some sites, WAVE reported zero issues while Lumi found critical keyboard navigation failures and missing landmarks.
What WAVE misses
Keyboard interaction testing - WAVE analyses the DOM but doesn't simulate keyboard navigation. It can't detect focus traps, missing skip links, or elements hidden behind sticky headers.
WCAG 2.2 criteria - Focus Not Obscured (2.4.11), Target Size (2.5.8), and Accessible Authentication (3.3.8) are all new in WCAG 2.2. WAVE doesn't test for these.
Alt text quality - WAVE checks if alt text exists. Lumi checks if it's actually meaningful - catching filenames like 'IMG_0023.jpg', text that's too short to be useful, and alt text that just duplicates nearby visible text.
Visual analysis - Text over gradient backgrounds, icon-only buttons without labels, and colour-only status indicators all require computed style analysis that rule-based tools skip.
Try it yourself
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