About Axe DevTools for Web APIs

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Introduction to the Axe DevTools for Web APIs for Node.js and JavaScript, C#, Java, Python, and Ruby.

Not for use with personal data

Deque offers API bindings for web development and scripting languages including Node.js and JavaScript, C#, Java, Python, and Ruby. These APIs allow you to scan your websites for accessibility defects as part of your existing automated testing runs or continuous integration (CI) builds.

Getting Started

See Axe DevTools for Web Examples for a catalog of pre-written example projects on GitHub that demonstrate how to use the APIs. You can clone these projects to start with a working example immediately. Check each project's README.md for step-by-step instructions to get started.

API Documentation

Axe DevTools for Web provides a variety of language and framework support, and the following links provide documentation:

Fundamentals for New Deque Developers

If you're new to using the Axe DevTools for Web APIs, there are a few topics that you might want to become familiar with before starting.

Installation

To obtain the Deque's libraries and packages, you have several options. See the following topics for more information about installation:

The Default Ruleset

Unless you configure something else, every Axe DevTools for Web API tests against WCAG 2.1 Level AA, the ruleset ID wcag2.1. Rules tagged best-practice and rules tagged experimental are turned off under that default. See Customizing Rules for what the default covers, how to enable best practices in each language, and how to select a different standard.

Analyzing iframes

Content inside <iframe> elements is analyzed along with the rest of the page, in every supported language. See Analyzing iframes for how frame results are reported and how to scope an analysis to an element inside a frame.

Accessibility Training

See Deque University for more information and training about accessibility and accessibility standards. Learning about accessibility will help you address accessibility issues earlier in the software development life cycle when it is more economical to fix them.

axe-core

The open-source library axe-core is the foundation for all of the Axe DevTools for Web packages and libraries. You can read more about it in the axe-core GitHub repository.

note

Deque's API packages (except for the Node.js Reporter packages) do not strictly follow Semantic Versioning rules. The packages lock their major and minor version numbers to the major and minor versions of their axe-core dependency with only the patch version possibly differing. (For example, if the API version is 4.7.2, then the axe-core version used by the package will be 4.7.x.) The difference from Semantic Versioning is that the patch version of a package may include not only bug fixes but also new API features. (The patch version will not, however, introduce breaking changes.)