Overview of the Scan Process

The "Scan" is the process in axe Monitor that browses a site in an automated fashion following every link in a page recursively according to the link level set when the Project is created. Scanning in axe Monitor is controlled by the Scans page (individual scan-level settings) and Scans Settings page (Project-level scan settings). These pages allow a user to define how deep to scan, what content to include or exclude, include use case scripts and scope definitions, and many, many other advanced scan settings.

Network Access Required:

As it relates to ports, for axe Monitor to be able to scan and analyze websites and web applications the Analysis Server needs to be able to access the desired websites for analysis. This can be accomplished through a proxy, and there must be a network path for this analysis.

Types of axe Monitor Scans

During the Axe Monitor Project creation process, you are given the option to create the Project in one of three ways:

• Basic Scan: Uses the default analysis options for the Organization to create the Project (these options can be modified at a later time) and runs a scan immediately.
• Custom Scan: Allows the user to create the Project and then modify the default scan settings before running the first scan.
• Use Extension: This is not a scan method – it creates a Project and allows the user to upload issues from the axe DevTools extension.

Basic Scan

During the creation of a Basic Scan, the user defines:

• The starting page of the scan
• The domain to constrain the scan to
• The scan depth - the number of levels down from the starting page that the scan will crawl (or all links and pages within the specified domain)

Note: The axe Monitor spider can traverse links provided in static HTML or inserted dynamically by JavaScript. The number of pages that can be scanned by axe Monitor is unlimited provided that the backend databases have the required disk space.

Custom Scan

Custom Scan settings allow users to:

• Modify Accessibility, PDF, Mobile or Quality analysis settings from the Organization default
• Limit or define the scope of a scan by specifying:
  • Specific URLs to exclude from the scan
  • MIME types and file types to exclude from the scan
  • Strings of text that a URL or the page content cannot contain to be included in the scan
  • Strings of text that a URL or the page content must contain to be included in the scan
  • URL parameters to consider in order to determine unique pages
  • The maximum number of pages to crawl and scan
• Apply Scope Definitions
• Utilize recorded Use Case Scripts such as logging into a site or application, filling and submitting forms, interacting with a shopping cart, etc.
• Loop through values (such as zip-codes or a list of selected countries) by providing the list of parameters as an input to a script.
• Emulate different User Agents
• Schedule scans to run on a predetermined repeatable schedule
• And more!

Creating axe Monitor Scans

For a New Project

See Creating an Organization Project for information on how to create a new Organization Project and its initial scan.

For an Existing Project

See Viewing a List of Existing Project Scans for information on how to view a list of existing scans for an individual Project and how to create a new scan for that Project.

Editing axe Monitor Scans

See Viewing a List of Existing Project Scans for information on how to view a list of existing scans for an individual Project and how to edit an existing scan.