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dequelabs/axe-core

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4 updates · last 90 days1 watchersOpen source

Last release: Yesterday

Axe-core is an accessibility testing engine for websites and other HTML-based user interfaces. It provides rules for WCAG 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2 (levels A, AA, AAA) plus best practices, and can be integrated into automated Web UI tests to detect accessibility issues.

Project status

  • Actively maintained: axe-core has very recent activity, with a new update (v4.12.0 on 2026-06-01) and an upstream push timestamp of 2026-06-02, indicating ongoing maintenance rather than dormancy.
  • Update cadence (approx.): updates are appearing on the order of weeks, with v4.11.3 (2026-04-13), v4.11.4 (2026-04-28), and v4.12.0 (2026-06-01), suggesting a roughly 2 to 6 week rhythm recently.

AI summary generated Today

AI-generated from public sources. May be inaccurate. Report

Recent updates

  • v4.12.0

    Yesterday

    v4.12.0 introduces ARIA validation improvements, including a new rule to require an accessible name for elements with role="tab", and a deprecation for landmark-complementary-is-top-level. It also adds public APIs and utilities to support Element Internals data injection (including elementInternal data loading and element-internals-aware role resolution), plus several bug fixes across aria and layout-related checks.

    BreakingFeatures

  • v4.11.4

    1 month ago

    Release 4.11.4 primarily fixes issues around ancestry selection and accessible name computation. It updates how axe-core builds ancestry selectors (escaping node names) and adjusts aria-labelledby label derivation so natively hidden elements are excluded from the computed accessible name.

  • v4.11.3

    1 month ago

    Release 4.11.3 focuses on reducing false positives for two areas: the `aria-allowed-attr` rule and the `target-size` rule. For ARIA, it restricts `br` and `wbr` elements to `aria-hidden` usage only. For target-size, it improves offscreen handling for `position: fixed` elements during scrolling.

  • v4.11.2

    2 months ago

    Release 4.11.2 focuses on reducing accessibility rule false positives, especially around target sizing, ARIA affordances, and scrollable-region behavior (notably Safari). The published notes list a set of ARIA-related bug fixes plus scrollable-region-focusable and target-size improvements.

    Features

  • v4.11.1

    4 months ago

    Release 4.11.1 primarily reduces false positives, fixes an edge case where the color contrast rule could skip testing a page, and corrects RGAA tag mappings. It also adjusts rule selection so rules targeting the document root do not also trigger on nested HTML elements.

  • v4.11.0

    7 months ago

    Release 4.11.0 adds RGAA v4 tagging across many rules and introduces multiple accessibility rule improvements (including fallback role support for aria-prohibited-attr and improved td-headers-attr reporting). The code changes also introduce a larger internal refactor around role parsing (via getExplicitRole), DOM grid access (getNodeGrid), and rule error handling (RuleError and serializeError), plus expanded TypeScript typings.

    BreakingFeatures

  • v4.10.3

    3/5/2025

    Release 4.10.3 contains a set of bug fixes primarily focused on keyboard tabindex parsing, aria role/semantics consistency, and media handling to avoid timeouts. It also includes an internal performance measurement change for async rule checks and some documentation/typo fixes.

  • v4.10.2

    10/23/2024

    Release 4.10.2 is a small bug-fix release focused on preventing crashes during testing when the DOM changes mid-run. The documented fix targets axe.utils.getAncestry so it does not throw when a node has no parent.

  • v4.10.1

    10/16/2024

    Release 4.10.1 focuses on bug fixes and a performance improvement, including faster execution on pages with many similar elements. It also changes the `ancestry` selector behavior for shadow DOM in a way that may affect deduplication when comparing results across versions.

    Breaking

  • v4.10.0

    7/29/2024

    Release 4.10.0 adds a new accessibility testing rule for the HTML summary element, and adjusts several ARIA related checks to reduce false positives. The release notes also mention an autocomplete validity refinement, plus various build and formatting fixes.

    Features