# pa11y/pa11y

Pa11y is your automated accessibility testing pal

Repository: https://github.com/pa11y/pa11y
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/pa11y
Homepage: https://pa11y.org
Language: JavaScript
License: LGPL-3.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: a11y, accessibility, testing, automated-testing, javascript, html-codesniffer, accessibility-testing, axe, pa11y
Last push: 2026-08-26T14:13:53+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 81/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 48, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4929, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 188, "gap_med": 131, "n_releases_24m": 4}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 4490, forks 296 (observed 2026-08-28T04:08:51.299336+00:00)

## What it is
Pa11y is an open-source automated accessibility testing tool that runs WCAG audits on web pages via a command-line interface or a Node.js API, using runners like HTML_CodeSniffer and axe-core on headless browsers. It reports accessibility issues in cli, JSON, or CSV formats and integrates into CI pipelines.

## Use cases
- run automated accessibility audits on a web page from the command line
- check a site against WCAG2A/AA/AAA standards
- integrate accessibility testing into a CI pipeline
- get JSON or CSV reports of accessibility issues
- test pages with axe-core or HTML_CodeSniffer runners
- audit specific page sections with CSS selectors

## When to choose
- you want a scriptable CLI or Node.js API for WCAG accessibility checks
- you need to gate deployments on accessibility errors in CI
- you want pluggable runners like axe or HTML_CodeSniffer with multiple report formats

## When to avoid
- you need a GUI dashboard for tracking accessibility over time (use Pa11y Dashboard instead)
- you need full manual accessibility review or screen-reader testing rather than automated checks
- you are not working in a Node.js environment

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: active
- function: testing, e2e-testing, cli, http-client
- domain: accessibility, testing, web-development, developer-tools
- platform: cli, cross-platform, windows
- tags: accessibility-testing, a11y, wcag, axe-core, html-codesniffer, puppeteer, headless-browser, automated-testing, command-line, nodejs, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- pa11y/pa11y (main) score 81

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:51.299336+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:20:29.299028+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/pa11y/pa11y (fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:51.299336+00:00, sha cac2a861e886)
  - homepage: https://pa11y.org (fetched 2026-08-29T09:06:53.571585+00:00, sha 691814f7e72f)
  - registry_npm: https://registry.npmjs.org/pa11y (fetched 2026-08-29T09:06:53.581040+00:00, sha 4ae7992d78c3)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.