Downloads of Industry-Standard Accessibility Rules Skyrocket

Tenfold Increase in 18 months – Now at 10 Million Downloads

Accelerated Interest in Open Source Axe Rules Library Highlights Recent
Progress In Accessibility for People with Disabilities

HERNDON, Va.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Deque Systems, a leading accessibility software company specializing in
digital equality, announces that downloads of its industry-standard,
open source axe accessibility rules library has reached ten million, a
tenfold increase in the last 18 months.

By contrast, it took three years for axe (introduced in 2015) to reach
one million downloads.

Deque’s axe rules library is the most widely deployed open source
accessibility rules engine. Google and Microsoft use axe as their
accessibility standard, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice.
Microsoft added Windows support to axe accessibility rules in March; now
developers can test their code in Web, Windows, Android and iOS
platforms using a unified standard.

“When we released the axe rules library as open source in 2015, our hope
was to empower the developer community to bring digital accessibility to
the world,” says Preety Kumar, CEO and founder of Deque Systems. “That
vision is now dramatically picking up speed, signaling that digital
accessibility is becoming a functional requirement for software.”

According to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), digital accessibility
refers to ensuring online properties – websites, mobile sites and
applications – are without barriers for persons with disabilities,
including those with vision, hearing, cognitive impairments and more.

The total number of axe HTML rules engine downloads comes from NPM,
a JavaScript open source repository. Users may also access the power of
axe through the axe
browser extensions, the GitHub
repository, and WorldSpace
Attest (Deque’s automated accessibility testing toolkit).

Legal Actions and Government Pressures: Government accessibility
regulations are growing worldwide, including the 21^st Century
Integrated Digital Experience Act (IDEA) requiring all digital
properties for publicly-facing U.S. government agencies to be accessible
by June 18, 2019. The European Union, Canada, India and Brazil also have
accessibility legislation in progress.

“As the importance of user rights, privacy, and information access
becomes a more significant issue in public discourse, accessibility will
become a key aspect of web and mobile best practices and user
expectations,” adds Kumar. “Axe will continue to be an integral tool in
the accessibility conversation.”

Axe currently tests for everything in the most recent accessibility
standards from the W3C, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
version 2.1, that can be tested via automation, keeping companies
up-to-date on current accessibility guidelines.

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.

Contacts

News Media Contacts
At Deque:
Ryan Bateman, 703-225-0380, marketing@deque.com
Kristina
LeBlanc, 508-930-5636, kristinawleblanc@gmail.com
Frank
Cioffi, 415-893-1570, frankc@medialinkgroup.com