@sa11y/jest

Accessibility matcher for Jest

• Overview
• Install
• Setup
  • Project level
  • Test module level
• Usage
  • Caveats
    • Disabled checks
• Automatic checks
  • Using environment variables
  • Sa11y results processor
    • JSON result transformation
  • Limitations
  • Disabled Checks

Overview

The toBeAccessible() API from this library can be used in Jest unit tests to test HTML elements or DOM for accessibility.

Install

• Using yarn: yarn add -D @sa11y/jest
• Using npm: npm install -D @sa11y/jest

Setup

The accessibility APIs need to be registered with Jest before they can be used in tests.

Project level

You can set up the sa11y API once at the project level to make it available to all the Jest tests in the project. For an example look at the Integration test setup in @sa11y.

• Add a Jest setup file (e.g. jest-setup.js) and add the following code that registers the sa11y API

// Import using either CommonJS `require` or ES6 `import`
const { setup } = require('@sa11y/jest'); // CommonJS
import { setup } from '@sa11y/jest'; // ES6
// Register the sa11y matcher
setup();

• Add or Modify the Jest config at project root to invoke the Jest setup file as setup above.
• In the jest.config.js at the root of your project, add:

module.exports = {
    setupFilesAfterEnv: ['<rootDir>/sa11y-jest-setup.js'],
};

• If the project already has jest configs, they can be merged e.g.

const { jestConfig } = require('@salesforce/sfdx-lwc-jest/config');

const setupFilesAfterEnv = jestConfig.setupFilesAfterEnv || [];
setupFilesAfterEnv.push('<rootDir>/jest-sa11y-setup.js');

module.exports = {
    ...jestConfig,
    setupFilesAfterEnv,
};

• This makes the toBeAccessible API available for any test in the project.

Test module level

Invoke setup before using the toBeAccessible API in the tests

import { setup } from '@sa11y/jest';

beforeAll(() => {
    setup();
});

• This makes the toBeAccessible API available for the tests only in that specific test module where setup() is invoked.

Usage

• toBeAccessible can either be invoked on the entire document (JSDOM) or on a specific HTML element to check for accessibility

import { extended, full } from '@sa11y/preset-rules';
import { setup } from '@sa11y/jest';

beforeAll(() => {
    setup();
});

it('should be accessible', async () => {
    // Setup DOM to be tested for accessibility
    //...

    // assert that DOM is accessible (using base preset-rule)
    await expect(document).toBeAccessible();

    // Can be used to test accessibility of a specific HTML element
    const elem = document.getElementById('foo');
    await expect(elem).toBeAccessible();

    // To test using an extended ruleset with best practices and experimental rules
    await expect(document).toBeAccessible(extended);

    // To test using all rules provided by axe
    await expect(document).toBeAccessible(full);
});

Caveats

• async: toBeAccessible must be invoked with async/wait or Promise or the equivalent supported asynchronous method in your environment
  • Not invoking it async would result in incorrect results e.g. no issues reported even when the page is not accessible
  • Promise should not be mixed together with async/wait. Doing so could result in Jest timeout and other errors.
  • In spite of using async/await correctly if you run into the error Axe is already running. Use await axe.run() to wait for the previous run to finish before starting a new run. try running tests serially by using Jest's run in band option.
• useRealTimers: ⏲ When Timer is mocked (e.g. jest.useFakeTimers()) accessibility API can timeout. Before invoking the accessibility API switch to the real timer (e.g. jest.useRealTimers()).
• DOM: 💡 The accessibility checks cannot be run on static HTML markup. They can only be run against a rendered DOM.
• template: <template> elements are not rendered in DOM and hence cannot be checked directly without rendering. They have to be rendered before they can be checked.

Disabled checks

Following rules are disabled for the Sa11y Jest API

• descendancy checks:
  • Following rules are disabled as they might fail at unit/component level but might pass at page level
    • aria-required-children
    • aria-required-parent
    • dlitem
    • definition-list
    • list
    • listitem
    • landmark-one-main
  • Following rules are not disabled, but they might pass at the unit/component level but might fail at integration/page level.
    • landmark-banner-is-top-level
    • landmark-complementary-is-top-level
    • landmark-contentinfo-is-top-level
    • landmark-main-is-top-level
    • landmark-no-duplicate-banner
    • landmark-no-duplicate-contentinfo
• color-contrast: 🍭 Color-contrast check is disabled as it does not work in JSDOM
• audio, video: 📹 Accessibility of audio, video elements cannot be checked as they are stubbed out in JSDOM
• real browser: If you need to check for color-contrast, audio/video elements or any other checks which need the element to be rendered visually please use a real browser to test e.g. using @sa11y/wdio

Automatic checks

The Sa11y Jest API can be setup to be automatically invoked at the end of each test as an alternative to adding the toBeAccessible API at the end of each test.

• When automatic checks are enabled each child element in the DOM body will be checked for a11y and failures reported as part of the test.

setup({ autoCheckOpts: { runAfterEach: true } });

// To optionally cleanup the body after running a11y checks
setup({ autoCheckOpts: { runAfterEach: true, cleanupAfterEach: true } });

Using environment variables

Automatic checks can also be enabled using environment variables

SA11Y_AUTO=1 SA11Y_CLEANUP=1 jest

• Invoking jest with environment variables as above will enable automatic checks with no changes required to setup()
• The environment variables can be used to set up parallel builds e.g., in a CI environment without code changes to setup() to opt-in to automatic checks
• Setting SA11Y_DEBUG=1 will output verbose logging
• SA11Y_AUTO_FILTER can be used to specify a comma seperated list of test file paths to filter out from automatic checks. When specified automatic checks are skipped for given files.

Sa11y results processor

The sa11y custom test results processor can be enabled using e.g., - jest --json --outputFile results.json --testResultsProcessor node_modules/@sa11y/jest/dist/resultsProcessor.js

• sa11y results processor affects only the JSON result output
  • It does not affect the default console reporter or output of any other reporter (e.g., HTML reporter)
• a11y errors within a single test file will be de-duped by rule ID and CSS selectors
• a11y errors will be transformed into their own test failures
  • This would extract the a11y errors from the original tests and create additional test failures with the WCAG version, level, rule ID, CSS selectors as key
    • bringing a11y metadata to forefront instead of being part of stacktrace
  • The JSON output can be transformed into JUnit XML format e.g., using jest-junit

JSON result transformation

With default results processor - a11y error is embedded within the test failure:

{
    "assertionResults": [
        {
            "ancestorTitles": ["integration test @sa11y/jest"],
            "failureMessages": [
                "A11yError: 1 Accessibility issues found\n * (link-name) Links must have discernible text: a\n\t- Help URL: https://dequeuniversity.com/rules/axe/4.1/link-name\n    at Function.checkAndThrow (packages/format/src/format.ts:67:19)\n    at automaticCheck (packages/jest/src/automatic.ts:54:19)\n    at Object.<anonymous> (packages/jest/src/automatic.ts:69:13)"
            ],
            "fullName": "integration test @sa11y/jest should throw error for inaccessible dom",
            "location": null,
            "status": "failed",
            "title": "should throw error for inaccessible dom"
        }
    ]
}

With sa11y results processor:

• Original JSON test result (failure with embedded a11y error) is disabled

{
    "assertionResults": [
        {
            "ancestorTitles": ["integration test @sa11y/jest"],
            "failureMessages": [
                "A11yError: 1 Accessibility issues found\n * (link-name) Links must have discernible text: a\n\t- Help URL: https://dequeuniversity.com/rules/axe/4.1/link-name\n    at Function.checkAndThrow (packages/format/src/format.ts:67:19)\n    at automaticCheck (packages/jest/src/automatic.ts:54:19)\n    at Object.<anonymous> (packages/jest/src/automatic.ts:69:13)"
            ],
            "fullName": "integration test @sa11y/jest should throw error for inaccessible dom",
            "location": null,
            "status": "disabled",
            "title": "should throw error for inaccessible dom"
        }
    ]
}

• Each unique a11y failure in a test module is extracted as a new test failure and added to a new test suite using a11y metadata as key. This could result in increase of total test count and suite count in the results JSON.

{
    "assertionResults": [
        {
            "ancestorTitles": [
                "integration test @sa11y/jest",
                "integration test @sa11y/jest should throw error for inaccessible dom"
            ],
            "failureMessages": [
                "Accessibility issues found: Links must have discernible text\nCSS Selectors: a\nHTML element: <a href=\"#\"></a>\nHelp: https://dequeuniversity.com/rules/axe/4.1/link-name\nTests: \"integration test @sa11y/jest should throw error for inaccessible dom\"\nSummary: Fix all of the following:\n  Element is in tab order and does not have accessible text\n\nFix any of the following:\n  Element does not have text that is visible to screen readers\n  aria-label attribute does not exist or is empty\n  aria-labelledby attribute does not exist, references elements that do not exist or references elements that are empty\n  Element has no title attribute"
            ],
            "fullName": "[Sa11y WCAG2.0-LevelA-SC4.1.2] Links must have discernible text: a",
            "location": null,
            "status": "failed",
            "title": "should throw error for inaccessible dom"
        }
    ]
}

Limitations

Automatic checks currently has the following limitations.

• Automatic check is triggered regardless of the test status which would result in the original test failure if any getting overwritten by a11y failures if any from automatic checks (#66)
• Tests using the sa11y jest api would get tested twice with automatic checks - once as part of the sa11y API in the test and again as part of the automatic check at the end
  • a11y issues from automatic checks would overwrite the a11y issues found by the API
  • If your tests typically use the sa11y API at various intermediate points cognizant of the DOM state, then enabling automatic checks in its current form could result in missed a11y issues
  • This would be fixed in future with (#66)
• Automatic checks are run at the end of the test. States of DOM before the end of the test are not checked which could result in missed a11y issues.
• If the test cleans up the DOM after execution, as part of teardown e.g., the sa11y automatic check executed at the end of the test would not be able to check the DOM
  • Workaround: Remove the DOM cleanup code from the test and opt-in to using sa11y to clean-up the DOM using the options as described above (cleanupAfterEach: true or SA11Y_CLEANUP=1)
• With the sa11y results processor, the originating test from which the a11y failures are extracted is disabled and test counts adjusted accordingly
  • But the original test suite failure message still contains the a11y failures.
  • The test suite failure message is typically not displayed or used in testing workflows. But if your testing workflow uses the test suite failure message, this might cause confusion.

Disabled Checks

• @sa11y/jest automatic checks also disabled rules which were disabled in toBeAccessible Jest API (disabled-checks)