Deque System’s aXe (The Accessibility Engine) open source library is a lightweight (~100 KB), fast, portable JavaScript library that executes automated accessibility testing inside your testing framework or browser of choice. Re-written from scratch over the last year, leveraging 15 years of accessibility experience, these rules represent the state of the art in automated accessibility testing. Understand more about aXe
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Why aXe is open source
Bringing accessibility into mainstream, Deque have taken an outstanding decision by making aXe an Accessibility Engine open source. Deque has over 15 years of experience in making digital accessibility. Deque’s mission is digital equality. Every accessibility SME at Deque deeply cares of accessibility and understand the needs of persons with disabilities and elderly. The accessibility rules at Deque are formulated after deep research, careful understanding and broad discussions. These accessibility rules are now available in aXe an open source accessibility Engine.
Download and Use aXe today
To download the module, make sure you have Node.js installed and are sitting in the root directory of your project, and execute the following command:
npm install axe-core –save-dev
Then include the JavaScript file in your test fixtures:
<script src=”node_modules/axe-core/axe.min.js” ></script>
Finally, make calls to the accessibility checker function at the appropriate points in your functional tests:
axe.a11yCheck(document, function (results) {
ok(results.violations.length === 0, ‘Should be no accessibility issues’);
// complete the async call
…
});
You can download the source code from Deque’s GitHub repository where you can also fork, customize, extend and contribute.
What Preety Kumar has to say about aXe?
I am thrilled to make our award-winning accessibility rules engine available as open source so we as a community can build upon 15 years of industry-leading accessibility research and best practices. Accessibility experts can now stop duplicating efforts and work from a common set of rules. Developers and testers can quickly get consistent, reliable, and meaningful results that are actionable. Automated accessibility testing results become easy to understand, extend, and integrate. Read more .
Thank you Deque Systems for this great initiative. I am Proud to be a part of wonderful team at Deque.