a11y-automation

This app is a work in progress; improvements and collaboration are welcome.

The app aims to track a few things:

potential violations; that is, specific ways an app could fail digital accessibility success criteria (called violations in this app)
automated linting methods available for each violation
automated testing methods available for each violation
manual testing methods, if they are required

This is an Ember app, which means you'll need to have Ember installed (npm install -g ember-cli) to contribute. Contributions are welcome, and come in many different flavors:

filing bugs
filing new feature requests
submitting a PR to resolve an issue, improve the styling, or add a new feature
improving the README or other documentation
adding art/graphics

Issues that have been evaluated for ease of contribution will have the label pr-welcome, but if you feel confident to participate as a professional, then please do so! PRs that align with the goals of the project will be reviewed.

Contributing

To work on this app locally, follow these steps:

clone this repository -- git clone https://github.com/MelSumner/a11y-automation.git
switch to this app's directory -- cd a11y-automation
run npm install to install missing dependencies
run ember s to build the app. If it all works, it'll be available at http://localhost:4200/ in your browser of choice.

The styles in this app are primarily provided by Tailwind.

To add assets (such as images or fonts) to the app, place them in the appropriate sub-folder in the public folder.

Adding Data

The data in this app is stored as individual .md files, which are then converted (automatically!) into .json for use in the application. This makes it fairly straightforward to add a new rule item or tag- it's done by adding a single .md file! Additionally, some generators have been created to streamline this process. (Want to see the automatic conversion in action? After you start the app locally, visit http://localhost:4200/violations/all.json to see the compiled JSON output! Neat, huh?)

Add a new violation

To add a new file to track a potential a11y violation, you can add one manually to the violations folder, or you can use the generator to generate the file and put it in the correct location- ember generate violations rule-name where rule-name is the name of the rule to be added. Note: Only ONE new file should be submitted per pull request unless previously coordinated.

Add a new tag

To add a new tag file, you can add one manually to the tags folder, or you can use the generator file from the command line: ember generate tags tag-name where tag-name is a dasherized version of the criterion. For example, WCAG 1.1.1 becomes wcag-1-1-1 and the entire command would look like this: ember generate tags wcag-1-1-1. Only ONE tag file should be generated per pull request unless previously coordinated.

Questions, Suggestions, or Concerns

If you have any questions, suggestions or concerns, the best way to resolve them is to file an issue on this repo and I'll respond ASAP. I'll also try to list questions I've already been asked, in case you are wondering about it as well.

Inclusion in Documentation

Although this app currently only tracks linting from ember-template-lint and testing from axe-core, PRs are welcome to add additional linting and testing libraries. Please follow the format in the existing violations to allow your PR to be accepted/merged more readily.

Why

Why did I make this an app and not a spreadsheet?

The broccoli-static-site-json addon means that I can work on individual failures in .md files and have them automatically compiled into a .json file. This (working in a single MD file) makes it easier to do the violationed work, and the compiled JSON output can be imported into any database at a later point.
I prefer to work in the open whenever possible, and this is also the nature of my work. By tracking what the failures are and what automation is possible, and doing this where everyone that wants to can also see it, everyone benefits.
This will identify gaps in automation that can be closed/solved for.
Spreadsheets can only do so much. There are a lot of other ways we can sort, filter and display data if it's in an application instead.

amyrlam / a11y-automation