Introducing AccessLint CI - Automated Web Accessibility Testing

We are excited to announce AccessLint CI, the easiest way to test web accessibility in CI.

Why would you use AccessLint CI

You need automated tests for accessibility, but you don’t want to overwhelm your team with breaking builds and hundreds of failures. In the past, we’ve used browser plugins to service this need, however this is slow, tedious, and inefficient. We’ve also used CI runners that fail the build on any accessibility violation, but this is noisy and overwhelming.

AccessLint CI automatically comments on your pull-requests instead of triggering build failures, and only tells you what has changed since the last build. This has a number of advantages:

1. You get all the advantages of testing with browser plugins, with none of the inefficiency.
2. Developers and designers learn about accessibility violations before code is merged and deployed.
3. Your team can decide when and how to fix accessibility errors, instead of being held up by insurmountable build failures.
4. You get very targeted comments about errors you have introduced, making you more accountable.

AccessLint CI makes it easy to catch the obvious issues, and is the perfect companion to manual accessibility review of more complex issues that cannot be tested automatically.

How does it work

All you have to do configure CI to run your app with the accesslint-ci Rubygem installed.

To use AccessLint CI with middleman and CircleCI, add the following in circle.yml.

general:
  artifacts:
    - "tmp"

machine:
  node:
    version: 6.1.0
  environment:
    CIRCLE_TOKEN: <CircleCI API token>
    ACCESSLINT_GITHUB_TOKEN: <GitHub Personal Access Token>

dependencies:
  override:
    - bundle install
  post:
    - npm install -g accesslint-cli
    - gem install accesslint-ci
test:
  post:
    - middleman server -d -p 4567 && accesslint-ci scan http://localhost:4567

That’s it. Open a pull request and AccessLint CI will start commenting.

What makes AccessLint CI awesome

1. Open Source. AccessLint CI and it’s libraries are open source, free for review and contribution.
2. Built on axe-core. axe-core sets an industry standard for comprehensive, reliable accessibility testing.
3. Flexibility. Fix accessibility issues without stopping the presses by failing the build.

Try it now

Start using AccessLint CI on CircleCI and keep accessibility issues in check!