Announcing axe-core 3.4

One of the most fantastic things about working on axe-core is seeing the kind of community that is developing around it. One of the ways this expresses itself is in public contributions. Which is why we are able to release new localisations as part of axe-core 3.4.

Localisations

In axe-core 3.4, the following localisations are now available:

• English (default)
• French
• German (limited)
• Japenese
• Spanish (new)
• Brazillian Portuguese (new)

We want to thank our public contributors for these translations, specifically nvdaes for the new Spanish translation, Thiago de Oliveira Pereira for the Portuguese translation, and Honoka Hatakeyama for her continued contributions to the Japanese localisation. To learn about how to use localisation, see the axe-core API docs. You can also find information about how to create your own localisation. We welcome anyone interested to contribute new translations to axe.

Lastly in the translations category, are now including the language code in the “learn more” URLs. This is going to allow us to also translate the Axe-core rule pages on Deque University.

New rule: aria-roledescription

We have created a new aria-roledescription rule for axe-core 3.4. This rule replaces the aria-roledescription test from aria-allowed-attr. By testing aria-roledescription attributes in its own rule, axe-core is better able to handle edge cases and give more accurate remediation advice.

Test axeVersion in axe.configure

Custom rules are a fantastic feature of axe-core, which allows reconfiguring rules, and even adding in entirely new rules, tailored to the environment they are tested in. By including the axeVersion a custom ruleset is built for, axe-core will be able to verify that the ruleset is compatible.

Axe-core custom rules follow semantic versioning. A custom ruleset built for axe-core 3.4.0 will be compatible with all versions released after 3.4.0, up until version 4.0.0. For more details, see axe.configure API docs.

Rule Deprecations

Three rules have been deprecated. For the checkboxgroup and radiogroup rules, while we recommend that most groups of checkboxes and radiobuttons be wrapped in a fieldset, we have seen scenarios where other solutions were preferable. In order for axe-core not to give inaccurate recommendations, these are deprecated. Similarly for video-description, while we recommend that you always check if a video needs a description, due to the lack of support in browsers for the description track, we do not recommend using this as a way providing audio descriptions.

These rules will be disabled by default as of axe-core 3.4, and will be removed when we release axe-core 4.0.

Other Changes

Noteworthy bug fixes include:

• Ensure non-printable characters aren’t reported for color-contrast#315
• role="status" fails label check #342
• Prevent getElmScrollRecursive failing on SVG in IE #525
• Support elements hidden through clip-path #1001
• aria-describedby reports referencing error, for empty spans that will have error messages. #1151
• Ignore ligature fonts in label-content-name-mismatch#1635
• Update tags to wcag21aa for avoid-inline-spacing#1698
• Non-localized messages (e.g., Fix any of the following / Fix all of the following) now appear in the proper localization language #1750
• aria-required-children Treat nodes without content as empty #1762
• img role=presentation now recognized as valid #1803
• Allow aria-readonly on role="listbox"#1821
• Fix category tag in meta-refresh#1835
• Scroll element into view horizontally when testing color-contrast#1845

For a complete list of changes see the axe-core changelog.

Availability in Deque Products

The axe-core 3.4 release will be made available soon for WorldSpace Attest, Comply, Assure and axe Pro.