We've upgraded our accessibility validation servers to axe-core 4.14.
There are still 105 rules in our axe-core ruleset. The change you're most likely to notice is in one of them, Elements must have their visible text as part of their accessible name. Smaller fixes in other rules may also move your issue counts a little when you re-run a report.
Visible labels are now matched word by word
This rule helps people who use their computer by voice. They press a button by saying the text they see on it, like "click Subscribe". If the button's accessible name, often set with aria-label, doesn't include that text, the command does nothing.
The rule was experimental in earlier versions of axe-core, and 4.14 turns it on by default. Rocket Validator already had it turned on, so it isn't new in your reports. What changed is how it compares the visible text with the accessible name.
Until now, axe-core only checked whether the visible text appeared somewhere inside the name. Now it compares whole words, in the same order. That changes your reports in three ways:
- Some issues go away. Punctuation no longer gets in the way, so a "Sign-in" button named "Sign in to your account" now passes. Text in parentheses is ignored too, so a link that reads "Download annual report (PDF, 2 MB)" with the name "Download annual report" passes as well.
- A few new issues can show up. A button that says "Subscribe" with
aria-label="Unsubscribe"used to pass, because "subscribe" hides inside "unsubscribe". It's now reported, and rightly so, since those two words mean opposite things. - Some issues become manual reviews. On checkboxes, radio buttons and switches, the visible text is sometimes the current state, like "On", and not the label. axe-core can't tell which one it is, so these now appear as manual reviews instead of issues.
Our guide for this rule has more examples and explains how to fix each case.
Faster checks
Deque put a lot of work into performance in this release. They measured axe-core 4.14 running 20% to 40% faster on most pages, and up to 15 times faster on very large ones.
Everything else
There are smaller fixes in other rules too, including color contrast, target size and scrollable regions. Some of them remove false positives, and a few may catch issues that were missed before. The axe-core 4.14 release notes have the full list.
Nothing to do on your side
We've already upgraded our servers, so your next reports will use axe-core 4.14 automatically.
Current accessibility ruleset
Check out the full list of accessibility rules currently checked by our web crawler:
