W3C Standardized Rules

Deque Systems is one of leading organizations in the development of standardized accessibility conformance testing rules. The axe-core rules proposal format is an adaptation of the Accessibility Conformance Testing Rules Format.

There are two ways a rule written in the axe-core rule format can be transformed into the ACT Rules format:

Method 1: Create a single rule

This method is useful for rules with a small number of checks.

  1. Add the test input type to it: rendered page
  2. Add an assumptions section, add possible assumptions to it
  3. Add an outcomes section, describing the different possible outcomes of the rule
  4. Add a Validation Tests section, that links to the integration tests
  5. Update the check to return pass/fail/cantTell instead of true/false/undefined
  6. Add control flow to the checks:
  • any checks should only return fail in the last step. All steps leading up to it either return pass or say continue to the next step.
  • all and none checks should only return pass in the last step. All steps leading up to it either return fail or say continue to the next step.
  1. Rename checks to steps and add a step X (where X is the step number) to the heading with the check name.
  2. Replace the tags section with a Accessibility Requirements. The requirements can be determined based on the wcag### tags.

Method 2: Create a rule group

This method is useful for larger rules with any checks. This effectively turns every check into its own rule, and turns the rule into a rule group.

  1. Copy each check into a new document
  2. Add a steps heading
  3. Add the test input type to it: rendered page
  4. Add an assumptions section, add possible assumptions to it
  5. Add an outcomes section, describing the different possible outcomes of the rule
  6. Copy the selector section from the original rule into the new rule documents
  7. Update the check to return pass/fail/cantTell instead of true/false/undefined
  8. Add a Validation Tests section, that links to only those integration tests relevant for this check (now a new rule).
  9. Indicate that the new rule is part of a group, using the original axe-core rule ID as the group name.
  10. Replace the tags section with a Accessibility Requirements. The requirements can be determined based on the wcag### tags.