Downloads of Industry-Standard Accessibility Rules Accelerate

Deque Systems, a leading software company specializing in digital accessibility, announced today that axe-core, the most comprehensive and widely-deployed open source library of accessibility rules, has exceeded 33 million downloads, lately averaging one million downloads every week.

More than 100 developers have contributed their best practices for accessibility to the axe-core open source program. Seventy-five percent of these contributors are not Deque employees.

“The number of external contributors is a sign of how active the axe-core community is, as well as the innovation happening in accessibility testing in general,” says Dylan Barrell, Chief Technology Officer at Deque Systems. “These contributions include nine language translations including French, German and Spanish; we would never have been able to offer these translations without the help of the community.”

Organizations reference the axe-core accessibility rules library as the de facto standard for accessibility testing. These rules help inform testers and web developers what is and isn't accessible. Axe-core is fast, secure and lightweight. It was built to seamlessly integrate with any existing test environment and can automate testing alongside regular functional testing. Google, Microsoft and the U.S. Department of Justice use axe-core as their accessible standard.

Axe-core is the foundation of Deque’s accessibility testing tools including the axe browser extension and WorldSpace Attest toolkit. Developers may download axe-core at: https://github.com/dequelabs/axe-core.

“When we launched the axe-core rules library in 2015, it took three years to reach one million downloads,” says Preety Kumar, CEO, Deque Systems. “The momentum we’ve seen over the last year reflects the increased demand for building accessibility testing into the development process early, as a result of increased legal action, government mandates, and the desire of organizations to make their digital assets available to all people.”

The Axe Momentum Continues: Built on top of axe-core and currently in beta, the axe Pro browser extension enables developers of any skill level to run both automated and intelligent guided tests against their websites and applications. Deque recently announced that the axe Pro beta had surpassed 6,000 users, 1,000 of which have provided ideas and feedback for improvements such as new guided test functionality.

The axe Pro beta can be downloaded free at: https://www.deque.com/axe-pro-sign-up/.

About Deque Systems

Deque (pronounced dee-cue) is a web accessibility software and services company, and our mission is Digital Equality. We believe everyone, regardless of their ability, should have equal access to the information, services, applications, and everything else on the web.

We work with enterprise-level businesses and organizations to ensure that their sites and mobile apps are accessible. Installed in over 250,000 browsers and with over 1,000 audit projects completed, Deque is the industry standard.

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