Validate accessibility with Pa11y inside your automated tests
Ensuring your application is accessible is not just a best practice—it is often a legal requirement and a key part of delivering quality user experiences. The Check pa11y accessibility step integrates automated accessibility auditing using Pa11y into your DoesQA flows, allowing you to validate that pages conform to recognized accessibility standards during regular test execution.
This means your automation does not merely verify functionality, but also checks how usable your interface is for people with disabilities, assistive technologies, and diverse interaction needs.
Why automated accessibility checks matter
Accessibility problems can be subtle and easy to overlook during manual testing. Issues like missing labels, incorrect ARIA usage, poor contrast, and non-semantic markup may not break functionality, but they can prevent users from accessing content or performing key actions.
By including Pa11y accessibility checks in your automated tests, you can:
Detect common accessibility violations early
Prevent regressions as your UI evolves
Increase confidence in compliance with standards
Provide clear reports that highlight issues
Because accessibility affects real people, automated auditing helps ensure inclusivity is part of your regular regression testing, not a separate silo.
How pa11y auditing works inside your flow
The Check pa11y accessibility step runs a Pa11y audit on the current page in your test. Pa11y evaluates the page against accessibility rules and produces a structured report of issues, including:
Missing form labels
Elements without accessible names
Contrast errors
Structural semantics issues
ARIA violations
Keyboard navigation barriers
Your test can then assert that the page meets the required accessibility threshold, and surface issues immediately if it does not.
Integrate accessibility with functional validation
Accessibility matters in almost every journey:
On forms where users enter data
On navigation menus
In dialogs and modals
On interactive components
In content that updates dynamically
By combining accessibility checks with other steps such as Open URL, Check Text, Fill Input, and Click Element, your tests validate not only that behaviour works, but that it works in an inclusive and accessible way.
For example, after navigating to a signup page, your test can:
Check that all form fields have correct labels
Validate that error messages are announced properly
Ensure focus management is correct
Confirm that interactive elements are keyboard accessible
This gives you deeper confidence than purely functional checks.
Make accessibility part of everyday automation
Traditional accessibility audits are often run manually at the end of development cycles, or only on major releases. This risks letting issues linger unnoticed.
With Check pa11y accessibility, you can:
Include accessibility checks in every run
Automate compliance against evolving standards
Detect regressions as UI changes
Report issues as part of automated results
This shift moves accessibility from a “nice to have” to a continuous assurance practice.
Improve team confidence and product quality
Accessibility is a concern for developers, QA engineers, product managers, designers, and stakeholders alike. Automated accessibility validation gives each of these groups:
Clear, objective feedback
Actionable reports
Confidence that interactive behaviour is inclusive
Meaningful signals before release
This helps teams deliver products that are not only functional, but usable by a wider audience.
Testing accessibility inside your broader test pack ensures that people who depend on assistive technologies experience your application as intended, and that accessibility is part of quality, not just an afterthought.