Ten million downloads and the axe logo with confetti and people clapping

Deque’s axe™ Rule Library hits 10,000,000 downloads!

It seems like only yesterday that our axe HTML accessibility rules engine hit one million downloads. Now, a little over a year and a half later, the total number of NPM downloads just surpassed ten million downloads!

The total number of axe HTML rules engine downloads comes from NPM package installs. 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).

Graph showing hockey stick growth of cumulative axe-core downloads from 2015 to 2019

854.49% increase from Oct 2017 to Oct 2018 (470,150 downloads to 4,487,532)
Source: https://www.npmjs.com/package/axe-core

Our 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, so developers can now 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.”

Seven new axe rules were added in the last year, with five new rules currently in progress. 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.

Thank you to each and every one of our users and contributors – whether you’re using an aXe extension, the Github repository, Chrome DevTools, Accessibility Insights, PA11y, Sonarwhal, or WorldSpace Attest – every one of those ten million downloads represents someone trying to make something accessible, and we applaud you. Thank you for being a champion of accessibility.

Join our exclusive Axe-Pro Beta!

We’re looking for front-end web developers to join our exclusive beta program to test our new axe-pro accessibility tools. Axe-pro introduces a new approach to accessibility testing that combines automatic and guided accessibility tests to maximize the impact you can make on your site’s accessibility without requiring any special expertise.

We need your help to make sure we’re providing the most effective and user-friendly testing experience possible. Learn more about axe-pro on deque.com.

photo of Dylan Barrell

About Dylan Barrell

Dylan is Deque's CTO and leads product development initiatives. He works to help to build a barrier-free web by making it really easy for developers, quality assurance engineers and content writers to create accessible applications and content. Dylan has an MBA from the University of Michigan and a BS from the University of the Witwatersrand.