14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft’s new Chromium-powered Edge browser on Windows 10 has achieved a perfect 100% HTML5 accessibility score, a huge improvement versus the 56% score obtained by Internet Explorer 11 on the company’s latest operating system.
“We've been hard at work improving accessibility support, with features like UI Automation and more accessible controls. With these updates, we're proud to share that the new Microsoft Edge now scores 100% in the most recent http://HTML5Accessibility.com test pass!” the software giant explains in a celebratory tweet today.
A screenshot also included in the tweet shows that Microsoft Edge 80 on Windows 10 obtained the best score from all browsers on the market, albeit the comparison that the company highlights doesn’t necessarily make sense as only old version of rival apps are shown.
Edge versus old browsers
For example, the screenshot suggests a comparison with Google Chrome 62 and Firefox 58 Beta 9, both of which are already two or three years old. So technically the screenshot puts side by side a 2020 browser and 2017 or 2018 browsers, which isn’t necessarily a fair comparison.
But Kyle Pflug, who is part of the Microsoft Edge team, says the purpose of the screenshot wasn’t necessarily to compare Microsoft’s new browser with Chrome and Firefox.
“The intent was not to draw the comparison or shame other browsers, though I recognize the screenshot invokes that. The intent was to highlight progress in Edge after a brief period of regression when we switched to Chromium,” he says. “We'll work to avoid invoking this comparison in the future unless we have updated data.”
The Chromium-based Microsoft Edge is also available on macOS, and Microsoft is believed to also be working on a Linux version of the browser. This one doesn’t yet have an ETA, but it’s believed at least a preview build could get the go-ahead for public testing later this year.