Deque Axe-Core Surpasses 250 Million Downloads

Increase in Download Rate Demonstrates Strong Momentum for Deque and the Digital Accessibility Industry as a Whole

HERNDON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Deque Systems, the trusted leader in digital accessibility, announced today that its open-source accessibility rules library axe-core has surpassed 250 million downloads. By making accessibility tools more widely available for organizations everywhere, this milestone in axe-core downloads marks significant progress toward Deque’s goal of digital equity for all and growth for the overall digital accessibility industry.

Axe-core is the world’s most popular accessibility testing library used by Microsoft, Google, and other leading development and testing teams across the globe. According to npm-stat, axe-core currently receives about 1 million downloads per day on average, up from an average of around 300,000 downloads per day this time last year. The increase in downloads demonstrates impressive growth for Deque as a company, as well as a noteworthy uptick in the general interest of practicing digital accessibility.

“While I am enthusiastic about the momentum Deque is experiencing from the surge in axe-core downloads, it’s much more encouraging to see that digital accessibility is starting to receive the level of attention it deserves from development teams,” said Preety Kumar, founder and CEO at Deque Systems. “The expanded adoption of axe-core shows that many organizations understand there are no silver bullets. Accessibility technical debt can be best avoided by testing early and often. Automated testing using axe-core is the most efficient and impactful way for developers and testers to make a difference.”

According to The Automated Accessibility Coverage Report, automated accessibility testing using the axe-core rules library can detect 57.38% of total issues with 100% accuracy (bugs not withstanding) for first-time audits, as opposed to the widely accepted belief that automated testing only provides 20-30% of accessibility testing coverage. By incorporating more automated approaches to accessibility testing, organizations can move the needle toward making the web a better, more inclusive place.

For example, continuous testing solution provider Sauce Labs recently partnered with Deque to enable its customers to easily integrate automated accessibility testing into their quality processes. Axe-core powers Sauce Labs’ Accessibility Score, which gives both testers and developers increased awareness and visibility into accessibility signals at every level of the software development process.

“By integrating Deque’s axe-core into the Sauce Labs Continuous Testing Cloud, customers can now automate accessibility testing and gain greater visibility into accessibility issues,” said Marcus Merrell, head of technology strategy, Sauce Labs. “At Sauce Labs, we believe that software should be equally usable by anyone and everyone, including people with disabilities. We’re impressed with how Deque has guided development and testing teams to make digital accessibility more of a top priority and are proud to be a partner.”

Deque also saw an increased interest in digital accessibility during its inaugural axe-con conference this year. Axe-con brought together the global accessibility community to share ideas about building more accessible experiences for everyone with over 17,000 people registered representing more than 7,600 organizations. Deque will host the second annual axe-con on March 15-17, 2022.

For a more robust, efficient and accurate path to accessibility, check out Deque’s suite of axe Tools, powered by the open-source axe-core rules library.

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 4,000 audit projects completed, Deque is the industry standard.

Axe is a trademark of Deque Systems, Inc.