The World Cup Is Coming to the United States. What Happens When Six Billion Fans Go Online?

For most Americans, the FIFA World Cup has always been someone else's home game. This summer, that changes.

The 2026 tournament is being co-hosted by the US, Canada, and Mexico. FIFA projects (opens in a new tab)nearly six billion viewers, making it the largest live and digital audience in the event's history. Fans across all 48 participating nations will be streaming matches, booking travel, checking schedules, shopping for gear, and tracking scores in real time. 

That is an enormous, wildly diverse group of people using digital products at the same time. Different languages. Different devices. Different levels of internet access. And a wide range of physical, cognitive, and sensory abilities.

High-demand digital moments have a way of showing you exactly where your experience breaks down. The World Cup will be one of the biggest of the decade.

What high-traffic moments do to digital accessibility

When a lot of people hit the same site at once, the gaps in a digital experience become impossible to ignore. For users who rely on assistive technology such as screen readers, keyboard navigation, or alternative input devices, those gaps often mean being locked out entirely. Countdown timers that interrupt screen reader navigation. Checkout flows that reset after a timeout. Ticket queues built around rapid visual cues that don't translate to keyboard-only navigation or assistive technology.

The 2026 WebAIM Million report(opens in a new tab), which analyzes the accessibility of the top one million websites, found that 95.9% of home pages still have an average of 56.1 accessibility errors per page. For users relying on a screen reader or keyboard navigation, this is the baseline they're working around every day, before any traffic spike hits.

In conversations with AudioEye's A11iance Team(opens in a new tab), a group of people with disabilities, checkout flows came up repeatedly as one of the most frustrating accessibility issues. One member put it plainly: "Ensure that the checkout and payment process is as well built as the shopping process. It's horrible to spend a lot of time finding that perfect thing only to be unable to check out."

That experience doesn't change when the product is a tournament ticket or a team jersey. It just stings more.

A global audience isn't a uniform one

Part of what makes an event like the World Cup worth paying attention to from an accessibility standpoint is that the audience isn't hypothetical. It's genuinely global, and it includes people across every kind of ability, language, and device.

AudioEye's 2025 Digital Accessibility Index(opens in a new tab), which analyzed more than 15,000 websites, found an average of 297 accessibility issues per page. Many of those issues cluster around the exact elements fans rely on during high-demand moments: navigation menus, form fields, interactive buttons, and streaming controls.

The common thread isn't complexity. Most of the barriers that make these experiences difficult, such as missing labels on form fields, color contrast that fails in bright environments, and video players without accessible keyboard controls, are fixable. They just require treating accessibility as part of how a digital product is built, not something layered on afterward.

What accessible digital experiences actually look like

There's no magic fix for accessibility at scale, but there are consistent practices that make experiences work for more people. Flexible time limits, or the ability to turn them off entirely, allow users with disabilities to complete transactions without being penalized for needing more time. Forms with clear labels, visible focus indicators, and useful error messages are navigable by screen readers and keyboard users. Captions and transcripts make video content accessible to users who are Deaf or hard of hearing, and often more useful to anyone watching without sound.

Accessibility improvements don't just help users with disabilities. They make experiences cleaner and easier to navigate for everyone, both during high-traffic moments and every day after.

Members of AudioEye's A11iance Team have noted this directly. "People with disabilities are very loyal clients," one member shared. "Accessible websites are hit and miss — if you find one that is accessible as well as user-friendly, you want to share the wealth."

Access isn't a bonus feature

The World Cup draws fans who have waited years, sometimes their whole lives, for their country to reach this stage. Some will be navigating streams with a screen reader. Some will be checking scores on a phone mounted to a wheelchair. Some will be watching with captions on because sound alone doesn't work for them.

Every one of them deserves to be in the moment, not watching it pass from the outside.

That is the opportunity. An event this global is a chance to prove what digital experiences can be when they are built for everyone from the start, not just under the bright lights of a tournament, but across the ticket queue, the banking app, and the government website people depend on every day.

The World Cup will show us where our experiences break. It can also show us how good they get when no one is left out. That goal is well within reach.