We understand that your scores in the Siteimprove tool are sometimes affected by issues that are out of your control. These are often code-related at the platform level and deal with accessibility or SEO. To keep you informed of what we’re addressing, please see the list below. It will be updated as we work on the issues.

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But first, see the list of site-specific issues that you can fix with content changes.

Site-Specific Issues For Content Managers to Address

Module	Issue Description	How You Can Fix
Accessibility	Heading issues	Be sure to use heading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) in hierarchal order and nest them where appropriate. Visitors who use assistive technology lose relative importance of content when heading tags are not in order.
SEO	Mobile Speed	Speed can be affected by the size of images. Make sure images are .jpg format and optimized in size for web. Large images and .png format will slow the speed.
SEO	Desktop Speed	Speed can be affected by the size of images. Make sure images are .jpg format and optimized in size for web. Large images and .png format will slow the speed.
SEO	Navigation depth beyond 5 levels	Consider the hierarchy that you need for each section. Can the navigation be simplified, combined, etc.?
SEO	Pages with iFrames	Consider if the iFrame is necessary. Can you link to the content rather than embed it?
SEO	Pages with low text-to-code ratio	On pages where there is very little content, you may be able to combine content.

Guide to Priority Levels

Fix these issues first to make the most impact on the accessibility of your site.
These issues can affect usability and content quality.
You may not necessarily need to fix these issues, but they are recommended guidelines to keep in mind.

Platform-Wide Issues

Recently Fixed

We added WAI-ARIA labels to Calls to Action, Promos, and Icon Lists so that crawlers are able to identify links with the default text "Learn more".

We fixed the lower mobile speed of some sites due to logo sizes.

Appropriate text alternatives for caret toggles in the side navigation menu will be added

Empty heading levels will be removed from Location pages

Adjustments will be made to the DOM (Document Management Order) so that it is in the correct order for all screen widths

The URL x.com (formerly twitter) on any social media references in contacts and the footer was incorrectly registering as a broken link in SiteImprove QA reports. This has been resolved at the Site Improve level.

We fixed the issue where using the tab key to navigate the page, the “skip to main content” link at the top of each page gets focus, but was not visible on the screen.

Previously, the pager did not indicate the “current page” in a way that screen readers can identify. This is resolved.

We are added those state indicators to breadcrumb links.

Work in Progress

Identified on Our Roadmap

Researching the appropriate fix for the bug in the WYSIWYG.

Researching appropriate text alternatives for links.

Reviewing page elements.

We are discussing the proper fix for this with the development team.

We Can’t Fix

We are unable to limit inline styles that are included in embedded items like YouTube videos.

SI flags the node path (ID of the content) that's used in the LinkIt (autocomplete URL) field. This is how GovHub works: The node path redirects to the friendly alias path.

This only occurs on some color palettes during the hover/active state of links.

This occurs with third party embeds (like YouTube videos or Incognito forms). The title attribute is supplied from the host site, but is not being recognized when SI crawls the website. We cannot add a text alternative with third party embeds.