2026-02-12 –, RoboCon
Studies reveal that over 90% of the top 1 million websites have detectable accessibility issues. Despite its importance, accessibility testing is often neglected. This is primarily because teams do not have enough bandwidth, budget, domain knowledge & technical skills to deliver an accessible product within available timeframes.
This is where an automated approach towards accessibility can greatly help. This session will discuss how we addressed aforementioned challenges through Robot Framework & axe-core together & saved the day against all odds.
Despite its importance, accessibility testing is often neglected. Studies reveal that over
90% of the top 1 million websites have detectable accessibility issues. Users relying on
assistive technologies frequently encounter barriers. Manual accessibility tests are
slow, inconsistent, and require specialized knowledge. As projects become larger and
release cycles shorten, teams struggle to test and resolve accessibility issues. This
leads to rework costs increasing dramatically if accessibility defects are found late in
the development lifecycle, and many teams lack the bandwidth, expertise, or budget to
perform comprehensive accessibility testing manually. This gap leads to undetected
accessibility issues, excluding users and creating rework late in the development
process. However, Automation offers a practical, scalable solution. This session will
walk through accessibility automation with Robot Framework in real time on a live
website, showing how accessibility can be implemented throughout the development
lifecycle. The demonstration will cover three aspects:
Integrating Accessibility Tools during Development phase
Before even writing automated tests, accessibility issues can be detected early during
development using the Axe-Core plugin in Visual Studio, as well as Storybook integration for component level accessibility checks. The session will show how
developers can spot violations such as missing alt text, or incorrect ARIA attributes
while coding. This helps to prevent future rework of the code.
Integrating Accessibility Tools in Testing
Afterwards, the session will explain, how Robot Framework can automate accessibility
testing by integrating tools like axe-core and Lighthouse. Accessibility checks are written
directly into functional and regression test cases, which makes these checks become a
part of daily testing without additional manual effort.
Accessibility in CI/CD Pipelines (Process Level)
Next, a live code example of triggering accessibility tests in a CI/CD pipeline will be
shown. This includes a demonstration on how detected issues are tracked and linked to
development tasks, ensuring continuous validation and preventing regressions before
deployment.
The session will also present how Robot Framework generates clear, visual reports,
categorizing accessibility issues by severity and providing recommendations for fixes,
which help developers, testers, and designers to work efficiently and maintain
accessibility compliance throughout the software lifecycle.
In conclusion, the true takeaway is that accessibility automation with Robot Framework
is not just about finding violations or issues, it’s about creating a sustainable system
where new technology actively supports diversity and usability.
Participants will learn the practical approach towards :
1. Implementing accesibilty in the early stages of design and development phase.
2. Using Robot framework with combination of different tools for automated accessibilty checks from unit to E2E level.
3. Integrating automated accessibilty Tests in CI/CD Pipelines.
4. Generating automated Reports/Dashboards for accesibilty checks
a11y, automation, automated accessibilty
Is this suitable for ..?: Beginner RF User, Intermediate RF User Describe your intended audience:Test Engineers, Frontend Programmers, DevOps Engineers
In-Person or Online talk/workshop?:In-Person (open for online)
Passionate Automation Engineer with quest for quality, inclusive design and high quality accessible products. Trying to put out good in the world by raising awareness towards accessibilty and helping teams for automated feedback on quality using Robot and power of tech.
Award-winning Engineering Leader | CEO Tea-time with Testers | Group Leader - Thought Leadership Accenture QES EMEA | Manager Accenture Song | International Keynote Speaker | Ex. Director Association for Software Testing