We've upgraded our accessibility validation servers to axe-core 4.13. Deque describes this as one of the bigger changes they've made in a few years, so your accessibility issue counts may change.
No rules were added or removed: there are still 105 rules in our axe-core ruleset. What changed is how some existing rules evaluate pages. The release includes 10 false-positive fixes and 13 updates to align axe-core with current web standards.
Better support for web components
One of the biggest changes in axe-core 4.13 is support for Element Internals, a standard way for custom elements to expose accessibility semantics from inside a web component.
This matters for component libraries that build custom elements such as <my-checkbox>. With Element Internals, a component can define its ARIA role, accessible name, and other accessibility properties without putting those attributes directly on the element in the DOM.
axe-core can now inspect these semantics when testing a page. This means some correctly implemented web components that previously produced false positives can now be evaluated correctly.
Deque describes axe-core as the first accessibility testing tool to support this feature. Support isn't universal yet, but sites that make extensive use of custom elements may see noticeable changes in their results.
Changes that may reduce your issue count
Several existing rules have been adjusted to avoid false positives or better match current standards:
- Images must have alternative text: whitespace-only
alttext on presentational images, such as<img alt=" " role="presentation">, is no longer flagged. - Landmarks should have a unique role:
<section>and<form>elements with non-landmark roles are no longer treated as landmarks by this rule. - ARIA role should be appropriate for the element: roles are now allowed on
<summary>elements that aren't inside a<details>element. - Elements must only use permitted ARIA attributes: many more elements can now have an accessible name.
aria-actions,sectionheader, andsectionfooterare now recognized as valid.- Elements must only use supported ARIA attributes: deprecated ARIA attributes such as
aria-grabbedandaria-dropeffectare now reported as manual review items rather than as violations.
Changes that may increase your issue count
Some changes can expose issues that axe-core didn't detect before:
role="img"elements and<svg>elements with an img role now also recognizerole="image", which wasn't covered by these rules previously.- Elements must only use permitted ARIA attributes:
<label>and<body>can no longer be named, so anaria-labelon a<label>, for example, may now be reported as a violation. - A visible
aria-labelledbyis now reported as a manual review item rather than a violation.
Changes that can go either way
The color contrast rule received several fixes for CSS stacking contexts.
These fixes can work in both directions: some issues that were previously reported may no longer be flagged, while contrast problems that axe-core previously missed may now be detected.
No action required
You don't need to do anything to get the new version. We've already upgraded our accessibility validation servers, so axe-core 4.13 will be used automatically in your next reports.
Full Changelog
See the axe-core 4.13 release notes for the complete list of changes.
Current accessibility ruleset
Check out the full list of accessibility rules currently checked by our web crawler:
