Benchmark · September 2026
The State of Arts and Culture Websites
We scanned the homepages of 150 arts and culture nonprofits drawn at random from the IRS census: museums, performing arts, arts councils, historical societies, humanities. 121 answered. This is what those 121 homepages have in common.
Scanned September 22, 2026
Nineteen in twenty arts websites fail at least one serious accessibility check on the homepage. One in four has images with no alternative text. On a site made of images, that is the exhibition.
Four in five have not told the world who may send email as them. More than half run on WordPress, and a third of those publish an administrator's username.
Headline numbers
| Measure | Result |
|---|---|
| Accessibility score (Lighthouse, 0 to 100) | median 67; a quarter at 47 or below; 31 sites (26%) under 50; 15 sites (12%) at 90 or above |
| At least one serious or critical accessibility failure | 114 sites (94%) |
| At least one critical accessibility failure | 55 sites (45%) |
| Images with no alternative text | 28 sites (23%) |
| Buttons with no readable name | 21 sites (17%) |
| Links with no readable text | 85 sites (70%) |
| Text without enough color contrast | 68 sites (56%) |
| No level-one heading | 30 sites (25%) |
| Zooming disabled on phones | 14 sites (12%) |
| Performance score | median 77; 22 sites (19%) at 90 or above; 3 under 50 |
| No meta description | 45 sites (37%) |
| Email: DMARC absent or monitoring-only | 100 sites (83%); absent outright on 33 (27%) |
| SSL certificate expiring within about six weeks | 31 sites (26%) |
| At least one dead internal link on the homepage | 53 sites (44%) |
| Runs on WordPress | 71 sites (59%) |
| Publishes a username through the REST API | 46 sites (38%) |
| Lists uploaded documents through the REST API | 53 sites (44%) |
Write the alternative text for the images on the homepage
A museum's homepage is its collection. One in four in the sample describes none of it to a screen reader. The fix is an afternoon in the media library.
Publish a DMARC record
One DNS record, about an hour with your email provider's instructions. It stops strangers from sending ticket confirmations and donation receipts as you. 83% of the sample has not done it.
Give every button and icon link a name
Menu toggles, carousel arrows and social icons with no text are the most common critical failure in this sample. One attribute each.
Turn zooming back on
One in eight arts sites blocks visitors from zooming on a phone. It is one line in the viewport meta tag, and the fix costs nothing.
Sample: 150 arts and culture nonprofits drawn at random from the IRS census (NTEE codes A2x through A9x, excluding media and support organizations), with a website on file and expenses of at least $500,000 on the latest Form 990. Pool: 651 organizations.
Scan: one homepage per site with the same runner as the free audit, robots respected, eight seconds between sites, on September 22, 2026. 121 sites returned a scannable homepage; 29 refused the scanner or timed out. Every percentage below is of the 121.
Counts are of sites, not of occurrences. Findings the scanner is known to get wrong (Cloudflare challenges read as cloaking, embedded maps and ticketing widgets, social networks refusing a bot) were removed before anything was counted. One page each, automated checks only.
The findings record, with the triage, is public in the LFW repository. No site is named anywhere.
Where does your organization's site sit against the 121?
Enter your domain and your email. We run the same free audit on your homepage and send you a scorecard with your numbers beside the sample's. The email confirms your address first; nothing sends until you click it. Then you get the arts and culture letter once a month, and you can stop it any time.
One confirmation email first. Nothing sends until you click it. The letter comes once a month and every send has a one-click way out.
Want the full picture for your own site?
The free audit above covers the homepage. A full audit covers the whole site, forms, email and accessibility, with a fix list. Either way, the next step is a quote or a call.