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Summary – Facing growing regulatory pressure, web accessibility becomes a strategic lever to prevent regressions, ensure WCAG 2.1 AA compliance, and demonstrate your inclusive commitment. By integrating Cypress-axe and axe-core into your CI/CD pipeline, you’ll automate a11y tests on every merge request (contrast, ARIA, keyboard navigation), enrich your backlogs with cypress-grep and XRay, and maintain continuous coverage with actionable reports.
Solution: deploy this a11y pipeline alongside UX reviews and an accessible design system to accelerate your cycles, reduce remediation costs, and unite business and IT teams.
In an increasingly regulated digital ecosystem, web accessibility has become a key differentiator for CIOs and IT project managers. Automating WCAG 2.1 AA checks with Cypress-axe establishes a robust “a11y gate” within the CI/CD pipeline, reducing the risk of regressions and non-compliance. By adopting this approach, organizations in Switzerland gain agility, streamline audits, and enhance application quality while demonstrating a strong commitment to digital inclusion.
Integrating accessibility into the CI/CD pipeline from the start
Accessibility is no longer an afterthought but a mandatory step in every build. Thanks to Cypress-axe, end-to-end test scripts now include systematic a11y checks.
Automating a11y tests with Cypress-axe
Cypress-axe leverages axe-core to scan web pages and immediately identify deviations from WCAG 2.1 AA. Tests run on every merge request, ensuring rapid feedback before any deployment.
By injecting axe-core into the Cypress runner, each component undergoes checks for contrast, keyboard navigation, and semantic markup. Critical issues are reported as actionable JSON reports.
Seamless integration into the CI/CD pipeline guarantees continuous verification, preventing the discovery of defects after production release. Teams gain reliability and visibility into a11y coverage.
Ensuring continuous coverage without regressions
Automated tests detect not only new defects but also regressions introduced by code updates. Every commit is validated against an a11y standard defined by the organization.
When rules evolve or internal guidelines are strengthened, updating the axe-core configuration is all that’s needed—no changes to business code. The pipeline then automatically deploys these new rules.
This model eliminates separate manual phases and streamlines internal audits. Coverage reports are available continuously and serve as documentation for QA teams and external auditors.
Putting it into practice in a business pipeline
A major Swiss insurance company integrated Cypress-axe into its GitLab CI environment to treat accessibility as a core aspect of its pipelines. Each merge request now triggers a suite of a11y tests before approval.
This implementation showed that 85% of detected defects could be fixed during development, avoiding post-acceptance cycles and high correction costs.
With this continuous feedback, IT governance was able to include a11y quality metrics in its monthly dashboards, strengthening decision-making and transparency between business and IT teams.
Detecting and fixing WCAG 2.1 AA non-compliance with axe-core
axe-core provides a robust library for page analysis and AA-level violation detection. The generated reports enable rapid prioritization of fixes.
Automatic identification of critical violations
axe-core applies over 50 rules from WCAG 2.1 AA and reports issues in real time, such as insufficient contrast, improperly defined ARIA attributes, or missing explicit labels.
Detected errors are classified by severity, allowing teams to prioritize actions on issues with the highest user and legal impact. Feedback appears directly in the Cypress runner console.
By using the generated JSON and HTML reports, developers gain clarity and can pinpoint exact lines of code to fix without resorting to time-consuming manual audits.
Integration into an agile remediation workflow
axe-core results integrate seamlessly into Jira backlogs via XRay or other test management tools. Each issue becomes a traceable ticket until resolution.
Once the ticket is created, developers can group fixes by modules or pages, schedule specialized sprints, and validate changes directly through the automated pipeline.
This “find-fix-verify” loop aligns with an agile approach, minimizing rollbacks and encouraging continuous a11y skill growth within teams.
Enhancing cross-team collaboration with tagging and reporting
Combining cypress-grep and XRay for Jira offers full visibility for product owners, QA, developers, and accessibility experts. Each test is tagged and traceable to resolution.
Organizing tests with cypress-grep
cypress-grep allows filtering and executing only tests marked with a specific tag, such as “accessibility” or “a11y-critical.” This facilitates targeted runs during dedicated builds or update campaigns.
By finely tagging each scenario, teams can isolate contrast tests, ARIA checks, and keyboard navigation controls. Pipelines then quickly detect new issues related to structural changes.
This granularity helps reduce test cycle times and focus developer efforts on high-priority modules while maintaining overall application coverage.
Reporting and traceability with XRay for Jira
Each Cypress-axe test is linked to a compliance requirement via XRay, ensuring transparent tracking of issues and their resolutions. Teams can view history and measure progress in real time.
Generated reports include screenshots and console snippets, providing a unified view of a11y status. Product owners can validate compliance before merging branches to production.
Automated reporting strengthens QA-development collaboration and simplifies external audit preparation, while ensuring continuous, documented feedback for each tagged test.
Case study in Swiss e-commerce
Swiss e-commerce player adopted cypress-grep and XRay to review every component of its purchase journey. a11y tests were tagged by issue type and associated user flow.
Within weeks, the team reduced the accessibility backlog by 70%, streamlined UI iteration cycles, and ensured uninterrupted releases for end customers.
This approach shows that tagging and reporting integration align business and technical priorities while ensuring full traceability and significant time savings.
Toward a complete a11y strategy: automation plus human review
Automation does not replace human perception but provides the foundation for continuous structural checks. Manual testing remains crucial for evaluating complex scenarios.
Combining automated tests with UX/UI expertise
While Cypress-axe identifies markup and contrast errors, only manual tests can assess cognitive experience, label relevance, and navigation fluidity for users with visual or motor impairments.
UX review sessions enrich automated scenarios with edge cases, such as screen reader use or mouse-free navigation. These insights feed back into the test repository.
This mix ensures superior quality by combining automation’s scale and reliability with accessibility experts’ discernment and sensitivity.
Building an accessible design system
A structured design system aligned with WCAG 2.1 AA provides ready-to-use components whose compliance is pre-validated. UI libraries integrate accessibility classes, contrast tokens, and ARIA patterns.
Each new module builds on this foundation, drastically reducing development time and regression risks. Cypress-axe tests then focus on specific use cases rather than basic component setup.
This systematic approach to an accessible design system strengthens visual and functional consistency across the application and enables scalable a11y compliance.
Example in financial services
Swiss financial institution combined Cypress-axe with accessibility workshops led by UX experts. Manual feedback optimized complex workflows like multi-step form entry.
The project revealed that 60% of user experience adjustments were not detected automatically, highlighting the indispensable complementarity of human reviews.
Ultimately, the organization achieved sustained AA-level compliance and developed a best-practices guide to support future application updates.
Edana: strategic digital partner in Switzerland
We support companies and organizations in their digital transformation
Automating accessibility: a pledge for lasting quality and inclusion
Integrating Cypress-axe and axe-core into CI/CD establishes continuous a11y checks, reduces regressions, and accelerates time-to-market. Paired with cypress-grep tagging and XRay reporting, this approach fosters shared governance between technical and business teams.
By combining automation and human review and structuring an accessible design system, your organization ensures an inclusive, compliant experience while optimizing development processes.
Our experts are ready to help you implement a robust, scalable a11y pipeline tailored to your business needs.
