Axe Core Accessibility Testing Engine

---
name: "axe-core Accessibility Testing Engine for Automated Web UI Auditing"
slug: "axe-core-accessibility-testing-engine"
description: "axe-core is the industry-standard accessibility testing engine by Deque Systems that automatically detects WCAG 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2 violations in web interfaces. It integrates into any existing test framework — Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, Jest — to catch accessibility issues during development rather than after deployment."
github_stars: 7010
verification: "security_reviewed"
source: "https://github.com/dequelabs/axe-core"
author: "Deque Systems Inc."
category: "Code Quality & Review"
framework: "Multi-Framework"
tool_ecosystem:
  github_repo: "dequelabs/axe-core"
  github_stars: 7010
  npm_package: "axe-core"
  npm_weekly_downloads: 39427202
---

# axe-core Accessibility Testing Engine for Automated Web UI Auditing

axe-core is the industry-standard accessibility testing engine by Deque Systems that automatically detects WCAG 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2 violations in web interfaces. It integrates into any existing test framework — Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, Jest — to catch accessibility issues during development rather than after deployment.

## Installation

Use the upstream install or setup path that matches your environment:
- npm install axe-core --save-dev
- npm run build -- --lang=nl

Requirements and caveats from upstream:
- Automated accessibility testing is a huge timesaver, it doesn't require special expertise, and it allows teams to focus expert resources on the accessibility issues that really need them. Unfortunately, most accessibi...
- Axe can be built using your local language. To do so, a localization file must be added to the ./locales directory. This file must be named in the following manner: <langcode>.json. To build axe using this locale, ins...
- Additionally, locale can be applied at runtime by passing a locale object to axe.configure(). The locale object must be of the same shape as existing locales in the ./locales directory. For example:

Basic usage or getting-started notes:
- First download the package:
- console
- Now include the javascript file in each of your iframes in your fixtures or test systems:

- Source: https://github.com/dequelabs/axe-core
- Extracted from upstream docs: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dequelabs/axe-core/HEAD/README.md

## Documentation

- https://www.deque.com/axe/

## Source

- [Agent Skill Exchange](https://agentskillexchange.com/skills/axe-core-accessibility-testing-engine/)