Provides a command line interface for aXe to run quick accessibility tests.
Install Node.js if you haven't already. This project requires Node 6+. By default, axe-cli runs Chrome in headless mode, which requires Chrome 59 or up.
Install axe-cli globally: npm install axe-cli -g
Lastly, install the webdrivers of the browsers you wish to use. A webdriver is a driver for your web browsers. It allows other programs on your machine to open a browser and operate it. Current information about available webdrivers can be found at selenium-webdriver project. Alternatively, you could use Webdriver manager
After installing, you can now run the axe
command in your CLI, followed by the URL of the page you wish to test:
axe https://www.deque.com
You can run multiple pages at once, simply add more URLs to the command. Keep in mind that axe-cli is not a crawler, so if you find yourself testing dozens of pages at once, you may want to consider switching over to something like axe-webdriverjs. If you do not specify the protocol, http will be used by default:
axe www.deque.com, dequeuniversity.com
Note: If you are having difficulty with the color scheme, use --no-color
to disable text styles.
You can use the --rules
flag to set which rules you wish to run, or you can use --tags
to tell axe to run all rules that have that specific tag. For example:
axe www.deque.com --rules color-contrast,html-has-lang
Or, to run all wcag2a rules:
axe www.deque.com --tags wcag2a
In case you want to disable some rules, you can use --disable
followed by a list of rules. These will be skipped when analyzing the site:
axe www.deque.com --disable color-contrast
This option can be combined with either --tags
or --rules
.
A list of rules and what tags they have is available at: https://dequeuniversity.com/rules/worldspace/3.0/.
Results can be saved as JSON data, using the --save
and --dir
flags. By passing a filename to --save
you indicate how the file should be called. If no filename is passed, a default will be used. For example:
axe www.deque.com --save deque-site.json
Or:
axe www.deque.com --dir ./axe-results/
To output the test results to STDOUT, provide the --stdout
flag. This flag has the side-effect of silencing all other logs/output (other than errors, which are written to STDERR).
To print the entire result object to your terminal, do:
axe --stdout www.deque.com
To pipe the results to a file, do:
axe --stdout www.deque.com > your_file.json
To pipe the results to a JSON-parsing program for further processing, do:
axe --stdout www.deque.com | jq ".[0].violations"
If you want to only test a specific area of a page, or wish to exclude some part of a page you can do so using the --include
and --exclude
flags and pass it a CSS selector:
axe www.deque.com --include "#main" --exclude "#aside"
You may pass multiple selectors with a comma-delimited string. For example:
axe www.deque.com --include "#div1,#div2,#div3"
Axe-cli will look for locally available versions of axe-core. If the directory from where you start axe-cli has an axe.js
file, or has a node_modules
directory with axe-core installed in it. Axe-cli will use this version of axe-core instead of the default version installed globally.
To specify the exact file axe-core file axe-cli should use, you can use the --axe-source
flag (-a
for short), with a relative or absolute path to the file.
axe www.deque.com --axe-source ./axe.nl.js
Axe-cli can run in a variety of web browsers. By default axe-cli uses Chrome in headless mode. But axe-cli is equally capable of testing pages using other web browsers. Running in another browser requires that browser's webdriver to be available on your PATH. You can find a list of available webdrivers and how to install them at: https://seleniumhq.github.io/docs/wd.html
To run axe-cli using another browser, pass it in as the --browser
option:
axe www.deque.com --browser chrome
Or for short:
axe www.deque.com -b c
When using the Headless Chrome browser, you may provide any number of flags to configure how the browser functions.
Options are passed by name, without their leading --
prefix. For example, to provide the --no-sandbox --disable-setuid-sandbox --disable-dev-shm-usage
flags to the Chrome binary, you'd do:
axe --chrome-options="no-sandbox,disable-setuid-sandbox,disable-dev-shm-usage" www.deque.com
Axe-cli can be ran within the CI tooling for your project. Many tools are automatically configured to halt/fail builds when a process exits with a code of 1
.
Use the --exit
flag, -q
for short, to have the axe-cli process exit with a failure code 1
when any rule fails to pass.
axe www.deque.com --exit
For debugging and managing timeouts, there are two options available. With --timer
set, axe-cli will log how long it takes to load the page, and how long it takes to run axe-core. If you find the execution of axe-core takes too long, which can happen on very large pages, use --timeout
to increase the time axe has to test that page:
axe www.cnn.com --timeout=120
If you find your page is not ready after axe has determined it has loaded, you can use --load-delay
followed by a number in milliseconds. This will make axe wait that time before running the audit after the page has loaded.
axe www.deque.com --load-delay=2000
To see additional information like test tool name, version and environment details, use the --verbose
flag, -v
for short.
axe www.deque.com --verbose
If you need to test your page using an older version of Chrome, you can use --chromedriver-path
followed by the absolute path to the desired version of the ChromeDriver executable.
axe www.deque.com --chromedriver-path="absolute/path/to/chromedriver"