axe-playwright
Advanced tools
The axe-playwright npm package is a tool that integrates the axe-core accessibility testing engine with Playwright, allowing developers to automate accessibility testing for web applications. It helps identify and fix accessibility issues by running axe-core checks within Playwright tests.
Automated Accessibility Testing
This feature allows you to perform automated accessibility testing on web pages. The code sample demonstrates how to launch a browser using Playwright, navigate to a web page, inject the axe-core library, and run accessibility checks.
const { chromium } = require('playwright');
const { injectAxe, checkA11y } = require('axe-playwright');
(async () => {
const browser = await chromium.launch();
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com');
await injectAxe(page);
const results = await checkA11y(page);
console.log(results);
await browser.close();
})();Customizable Accessibility Checks
This feature allows you to customize the accessibility checks by specifying options such as WCAG levels. The code sample shows how to run accessibility checks with specific WCAG tags.
const { chromium } = require('playwright');
const { injectAxe, checkA11y } = require('axe-playwright');
(async () => {
const browser = await chromium.launch();
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com');
await injectAxe(page);
const options = { runOnly: { type: 'tag', values: ['wcag2a', 'wcag2aa'] } };
const results = await checkA11y(page, null, options);
console.log(results);
await browser.close();
})();Integration with Playwright Test Runner
This feature allows you to integrate accessibility checks directly into Playwright's test runner. The code sample demonstrates how to write a Playwright test that includes an accessibility check and asserts that there are no violations.
const { test, expect } = require('@playwright/test');
const { injectAxe, checkA11y } = require('axe-playwright');
test('Accessibility test', async ({ page }) => {
await page.goto('https://example.com');
await injectAxe(page);
const results = await checkA11y(page);
expect(results.violations.length).toBe(0);
});axe-core is the underlying accessibility testing engine used by axe-playwright. It can be used directly for accessibility testing in various environments, including browser extensions and other automation tools. While axe-playwright integrates axe-core with Playwright, axe-core itself is more versatile and can be used with other testing frameworks.
Pa11y is an accessibility testing tool that can be used to run automated accessibility tests on web pages. It provides a command-line interface and can be integrated with various CI/CD pipelines. Compared to axe-playwright, Pa11y is more standalone and does not require Playwright for running tests.
cypress-axe is a plugin that integrates axe-core with Cypress, another popular end-to-end testing framework. It provides similar functionality to axe-playwright but is designed for use with Cypress instead of Playwright. Both tools offer automated accessibility testing, but they cater to different testing frameworks.
Axe is an accessibility testing engine for websites and other HTML-based user interfaces. This package provides simple axe analyser commands which you can incorporate in your Playwright tests.
npm i -D axe-playwright
npm i -D playwright
NOTE: axe-core is now bundled and doesn't need to be installed as a peer dependency
//tsconfig.json
{
"compilerOptions": {
"types": ["axe-playwright"]
}
}
This will inject the axe-core runtime into the page under test. You must run this after a call to page.goto() and before you run the checkA11y command.
You run this command with injectAxe() either in your test, or in a beforeEach, as long as the visit comes first.
beforeAll(async () => {
browser = await chromium.launch()
page = await browser.newPage()
await page.goto(`http://localhost:3000/login`)
await injectAxe(page)
})
To configure the format of the data used by aXe. This can be used to add new rules, which must be registered with the library to execute.
User specifies the format of the JSON structure passed to the callback of axe.run
Link - aXe Docs: axe.configure
it('Has no detectable a11y violations on load (custom configuration)', async () => {
// Configure aXe and test the page at initial load
await configureAxe(page, {
branding: {
brand: String,
application: String,
},
reporter: 'option',
checks: [Object],
rules: [Object],
locale: Object,
})
await checkA11y()
})
This will run axe against the document at the point in which it is called. This means you can call this after interacting with your page and uncover accessibility issues introduced as a result of rendering in response to user actions.
The page instance of playwright.
Defines the scope of the analysis - the part of the DOM that you would like to analyze. This will typically be the document or a specific selector such as class name, ID, selector, etc.
Set of options passed into rules or checks, temporarily modifying them. This contrasts with axe.configure, which is more permanent.
The keys consist of those accepted by axe.run's options argument as well as custom includedImpacts, detailedReport, verbose, and detailedReportOptions keys.
The includedImpacts key is an array of strings that map to impact levels in violations. Specifying this array will only include violations where the impact matches one of the included values. Possible impact values are "minor", "moderate", "serious", or "critical".
Filtering based on impact in combination with the skipFailures argument allows you to introduce axe-playwright into tests for a legacy application without failing in CI before you have an opportunity to address accessibility issues. Ideally, you would steadily move towards stricter testing as you address issues.
e-effects, such as adding custom output to the terminal.
NOTE: This respects the includedImpacts filter and will only execute with violations that are included.
The detailedReport key is a boolean whether to print the more detailed report detailedReportOptions is an object with the shape
{
html?: boolean // include the full html for the offending nodes
}
The verbose key is a boolean to whether to print the message No accessibility violations detected! when there aren't accessibility violations present in the test. For the DefaultTerminalReporter this is true and for the v2 Reporter this is false.
A class instance that implements the Reporter interface or values default and v2. Custom reporter instances can be supplied to override default reporting behaviour dictated by DefaultTerminalReporter set by the value default. v2 is the new TerminalReporter inspired by the reports from jest-axe.
Disables assertions based on violations and only logs violations to the console output. If you set skipFailures as true, although accessibility check is not passed, your test will not fail. It will simply print the violations in the console, but will not make the test fail.
This will run axe against the document at the point in which it is called, then returns the full set of results as reported by axe.run.
The page instance of playwright.
Defines the scope of the analysis - the part of the DOM that you would like to analyze. This will typically be the document or a specific selector such as class name, ID, selector, etc.
Set of options passed into rules or checks, temporarily modifying them. This contrasts with axe.configure, which is more permanent.
The object is of the same type which is accepted by axe.run's options argument and directly forwarded to it.
This will run axe against the document at the point in which it is called, then return you an array of accessibility violations (i.e. the violations array included in the getAxeResults result).
Identical to parameters of getAxeResults.
Reports violations based on the Reporter concrete implementation behaviour.
An array of Axe violations to be printed.
A class instance that implements the Reporter interface. Custom reporter instances can be supplied to override default reporting behaviour dictated by DefaultTerminalReporter.
import { chromium, Browser, Page } from 'playwright'
import { injectAxe, checkA11y, getViolations, reportViolations } from 'axe-playwright'
let browser: Browser
let page: Page
describe('Playwright web page accessibility test', () => {
beforeAll(async () => {
browser = await chromium.launch()
page = await browser.newPage()
await page.goto(`file://${process.cwd()}/test/site.html`)
await injectAxe(page)
})
it('simple accessibility run', async () => {
await checkA11y(page)
})
it('check a11y for the whole page and axe run options', async () => {
await checkA11y(page, null, {
axeOptions: {
runOnly: {
type: 'tag',
values: ['wcag2a'],
},
},
})
})
it('check a11y for the specific element', async () => {
await checkA11y(page, 'input[name="password"]', {
axeOptions: {
runOnly: {
type: 'tag',
values: ['wcag2a'],
},
},
})
})
it('gets and reports a11y for the specific element', async () => {
const violations = await getViolations(page, 'input[name="password"]', {
runOnly: {
type: 'tag',
values: ['wcag2a'],
},
})
reportViolations(violations, new YourAwesomeCsvReporter('accessibility-report.csv'))
expect(violations.length).toBe(0)
})
afterAll(async () => {
await browser.close()
})
})
This custom logging behavior results in terminal output like this:
The detailed report is disabled by default, but can be enabled by including the detailedReport property in the checkAlly options.
import { chromium, Browser, Page } from 'playwright'
import { injectAxe, checkA11y } from 'axe-playwright'
let browser: Browser
let page: Page
describe('Playwright web page accessibility test', () => {
beforeAll(async () => {
browser = await chromium.launch()
page = await browser.newPage()
await page.goto(`file://${process.cwd()}/test/site.html`)
await injectAxe(page)
})
// Prints outs a detailed report per node with an array of numbers of which violations from the summary affect that node
it('print out a detailed report on violations', async () => {
await checkA11y(page, null, {
detailedReport: true,
})
})
// Same as above, but includes the html of the offending node
it('print out a detailed report on violations', async () => {
await checkA11y(page, null, {
detailedReport: true,
detailedReportOptions: { html: true },
})
})
afterAll(async () => {
await browser.close()
})
})
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FAQs
Custom Playwright commands to inject axe-core and test for a11y
The npm package axe-playwright receives a total of 195,386 weekly downloads. As such, axe-playwright popularity was classified as popular.
We found that axe-playwright demonstrated a healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released less than a year ago. It has 2 open source maintainers collaborating on the project.
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