What’s new in axe Developer Hub: Updates for more flexibility, security, and control
When it comes to digital accessibility, finding issues earlier is always better. You save time and money, and most importantly, you ensure accessible experiences for your users every time.
Axe Developer Hub was built so you can effortlessly add automated accessibility testing to your end-to-end (E2E) tests with just a simple configuration, allowing you to catch and fix issues early and maximize productivity.
The first release of axe Developer Hub focused on streamlining E2E testing for teams using JavaScript and TypeScript frameworks and reading reports within a SaaS environment. Since then, we’ve been listening closely to your feedback, and now, we’re excited to introduce a new wave of features.
With the latest updates, you can:
- Run E2E Selenium tests written in Java. Test across more environments with broader integration coverage.
- Deploy on-prem. Keep test results in your own environment for enhanced data security and compliance.
- Gain more control of your testing experience. Apply configuration settings and selectively add accessibility tests to some or all E2E tests.
Whether you’re a developer, QA engineer, or central accessible team leader, you know catching digital accessibility issues early is critical to your success. Let’s explore how the new features make this easier than ever.
Expanded testing language and framework support
If you use Selenium with Java, you can now plug axe Developer Hub right into your test framework with no ongoing maintenance required. With one simple configuration, you get accessibility tests in your E2E Selenium testing environment. You won’t have to constantly worry about updating accessibility API calls in your code or ensuring that accessibility is accounted for with each new test.
On-prem deployment for secure experiences
In addition to leveraging axe Developer Hub in SaaS environments, you can now deploy it in your on-premise systems. This enables you to easily add automated accessibility tests to your E2E testing workflows while keeping your data on servers you control. This means you now have more ways to experience the benefits of automated accessibility testing while maintaining your unique security and compliance requirements.
Greater control and flexibility
Axe Developer Hub now gives you the ability to standardize settings (such as what rules to include or exclude in tests) and select where you want to add automated accessibility tests for more controlled analysis. This gives you more freedom to match axe Developer Hub functionality with your needs and workflows so that you can maintain control, ensure standardization across products, and integrate accessibility testing seamlessly into your development process.
Real-world benefits of using axe Developer Hub
Here are two examples of how you can use axe Developer Hub to improve processes and get the results you need.
Data consistency
Let’s say you’re a central accessibility team leader, and you want to make sure that the automated tests run from both the axe DevTools Extension and axe Developer Hub are running the same version of axe-core and are both testing against WCAG 2.2 AA.
As shown in the image below, from axe.deque.com, you can navigate to “Configurations.” Within the page, there are “Global options.” These options allow you to set the rules run by different Deque tools. Data consistency, solved!
Controlled page analysis
In this next example, imagine you’re someone reviewing E2E test results. You only want to see results that matter to you and your team, because issues related to other teams are just noise. In this exercise, you’re part of Team A.
Here is a simple E2E test for an online shopping experience:
- Visit home page.
- Navigate to product catalog and add items to cart.
- Review shopping cart and select checkout.
- Fill out the checkout form.
- Review order confirmation.
- Review product recommendations.
This list looks pretty simple until you consider “who owns what.”
| Page | Owner |
|---|---|
| Home page | Marketing |
| Product catalog | Marketing |
| Shopping cart | Team A |
| Checkout form | Team A |
| Order confirmation | Team A |
| Recommendations | Marketing |
If you were to add “watcher” (a component of axe Developer Hub) to this E2E test, then accessibility data would be gathered for all of these pages, and your team would have to wade through issues that aren’t relevant to them. With the ability to selectively add accessibility tests, you can pause and resume tests so that you get exactly what you want. More control, less noise!
Let’s wrap up this example by comparing the two approaches.
| Page | Owner | Automatic analysis | Controlled analysis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home page | Marketing | Analyze | Turn off automatic analysis and don’t analyze. |
| Product catalog | Marketing | Analyze | No analysis |
| Shopping cart | Team A | Analyze | Turn on automatic analysis and analyze. |
| Checkout form | Team A | Analyze | Analyze |
| Order confirmation | Team A | Analyze | Analyze |
| Recommendations | Marketing | Analyze | Turn off automatic analysis and don’t analyze. |
See axe Developer Hub in action
Ready to experience the benefits of our latest axe Developer Hub updates? Request a demo today to discover how simple it is to integrate automated E2E accessibility testing into your workflow.
~
Bonus news!
Axe Developer Hub isn’t the only feature getting an upgrade. So is our axe Linter. You can now lint code locally! In addition to checking your code for accessibility issues server-side, you can now run accessibility linting directly from your local environment, such as your laptop. This means faster scanning of large codebases while keeping everything securely in your system. Learn more.
