Page Insights

axe Expert Extension 3.5 Page Insights provides insight into how assistive technology evaluates:

• Headings
• Links
• Lists
• Images
• Focus
• Frames
• Objects
• Landmarks
• Autocomplete

axe Expert Extension Page Insights tools provide a text-based simulation of how screen readers interpret webpage content. The tools create a text transcript based on the browser's Accessibility Object Model (AOM). The AOM "interpretation" reveals the page as interpreted by assistive technology and screen reader software. Subtle differences exist between screen reader brand interpretations of the AOM. For example, Freedom Science JAWS and NVDA do not necessarily duplicate features and functionality based on the AOM of a single web page. Therefore, Page Insights does not represent the subtle differences between all screen readers. The goal of the Page Insights tools is to provide a general idea of the kinds of things screen readers convey to users.

A complete accessibility evaluation requires testing with real screen readers, especially in the case of dynamic content, ARIA, and JavaScript.

Page Insights's user interface splits the display into three panels:

1. The Select a tool panel provides access to each of the nine Page Insights tools.
2. The main content panel contains content identifying the currently selected tool, explaining the purpose of the currently selected tool, any user instructions, and controls for toggling page "widgets" enabling further interaction with the analyzed page content. The panel includes overview info, like counts for essential items and lists of items with which the user can interact to find elements on the content page.
3. A panel displaying currently selected tool findings in the tested page allowing you to navigate to and highlight each specific instance of the semantic component on the page for further inspection.

The "Mini Deque Way" Web testing methodology instructions

In order to help non-experts make better use of the Page Insights tools, we have included some testing methodology instructions. The added snippets should help users get the most out of the tools and help them validate fixes they have made.

The DevTools panel

The Page Insights tools are listed in the Select a tool column. Tools are specific to semantic components of the web page under test:

1. Headings
2. Links
3. Lists
4. Images
5. Focus
6. Frames
7. Objects
8. Landmarks
9. Autocomplete

Page Insights tools analyze full web pages. Running analysis with Page Insights tools help you inspect page components in context and reveal potential accessibility issues that may not be identified using automated processes.

The Main Content Panel

Page Insights's main content panel contains the bulk of the currently selected tool's user interface and returned analysis results. The main content panel includes the following:

1. The name of the selected tool.
2. User Instructions and an explanation of the tool's purpose.
3. Controls for toggling the visibility of widgets on the analyzed content page.
4. Analysis overview information like total counts of important content components.
5. A list of items enabling the user to find and interact with specific content components on the analyzed content page.
6. Currently analyzed web page.

Many of the Page Insights tools rely on interactive widgets to identify element in the content page. axe Expert Extension 3.5 Page Insights tools provide the following interactive widgets to users:

• A HIGHLIGHT ALL widget to highlight every semantic occurrence on the page using the currently selected tool.
• A text widget to display short strings of text in close to elements.

Known Limitations

All Page Insights tools

• Elements gathered from nested frames may not appear in the correct order in the overall elements list.

• Elements cannot be gathered from cross-domain frames.

• Elements cannot be gathered from Shadow DOM contexts.