Top all-time · #2695
Deque
Company blog · deque.com/blogweb
Deque is the company blog at deque.com, writing about web. Since 2016, 28 different Hacker News readers have linked it 36 times, most often “Axe: Accessibility Testing Tools and Software”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-22, and you can follow it by feed.
Deque Systems provides web and mobile accessibility solutions so you can meet compliance goals and help make the web accessible to all users.
Most-linked posts?
- Axe: Accessibility Testing Tools and Software9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2019-03-24
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-03-27
- Using our skills as technologists to protect the equal rights of users2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-12-17
What Hacker News says?
While I don't yet know a ton about the accessibility software development community, I've discovered Deque Labs[1] while looking into some accessibility tooling. They have really good resources and training around accessibility for the web, and some of the software they develop[2] is incorporated into Google Lighthouse. Their guides and videos might help you get a sense for how other people use alternative access me…
Comment linking /services/accessibility-empathy-lab/
on “Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?”Submitted Axe: Accessibility Testing Tools and Software as a story · 35 points
HN discussionI'm pretty sure blind people don't even notice this 'terrible UX' problem you describe, and that sighted folks aren't quite as jarred by it as you think. This 'taste' issue probably matters more in some organizations than others. Hopefully they don't involve blind people in their business, because SPAs are notorious for being unusable to them. You can design an SPA with accessibility in mind ( https://www.deque.com/…
Comment linking /blog/accessibility-tips-in-single-page-applications/
on “Second-Guessing the Modern Web”Submitted Deque Systems Sues BrowserStack for Intellectual Property Theft as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIt's totally possible to create accessible SVGs [1], you "just" need to provide a text alternative. The challenge is that there is not the _best_ implementation out there and it might be problematic for large contents wrapped in a single SVG. [1] https://www.deque.com/blog/creating-accessible-svgs/
Comment linking /blog/creating-accessible-svgs/
on “CSS in GitHub Readmes”Submitted Using our skills as technologists to protect the equal rights of users as a story · 3 points
HN discussionFor web apps you can install the tota11y [1] browser extension and use its experimental Screen Reader Wand feature to get an idea of how a screen reader will interpret elements. tota11y uses Chrome's Accessibility Developer Tools. Deque maintains browser extensions that use their own open source engine [2]: http://www.deque.com/products/axe/#aXeExtensions Both engines could also be used in CI environments to perform…
Comment linking /products/axe/
on “Ask HN: Any other blind devs interested in working on dev tools for the blind?”Submitted JavaScript and Civil Rights as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSeeing a lot of issues here that would also be violations of WCAG guidelines, and thus be something you could bring an ADA accessibility suit against the companies over. https://medium.com/front-end-weekly/dominos-pizza-and-web-ac... https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/07/dominos-supreme-court.html For all of your web projects... 90+ score in Lighthouse is a good bar to aim for. And look for any errors in Wave or Axe -- th…
Comment linking /axe/
on “Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore”Submitted Why Unique ID Attributes Matter (2016) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionOf note, you can use the ARIA label attribute to customize this for many users: https://www.deque.com/blog/text-links-practices-screen-reade...
Comment linking /blog/text-links-practices-screen-readers/
on “Annoying website features I face as a blind person”Submitted A History of Section 508 Accessibility as a story · 2 points
HN discussionDeque Systems | Full-time | Remote (US) | https://deque.com Deque is the leader in accessibility tools, services and training. We enable businesses and organizations to make their sites and apps accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities. Our experts help define web standards, and with over 475,000 deployments worldwide, our tools are the de facto standard for automated accessibility testing. We're h…
Comment linking /company/careers
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2024)”Submitted Why Unique ID Attributes Matter (2016) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSimply try to browse the page without using mouse, just the tab key. The next step would be to use screen reader, NVDA[1] (Windows) or Apple VoiceOver (MacOS). There are automated testing tools, but they don't cover the whole spectrum of problems. Nevertheless you can try * WAVE (Chrome or FF plugin, https://wave.webaim.org/extension/ ) * AXE ( https://www.deque.com/axe/ ) * AChecker ( https://achecker.us/checker/in…
Comment linking /axe/
on “Ask HN: A Good Alternative for ReCaptcha?”Submitted How to Design Useful and Usable Focus Indicators as a story · 1 points
HN discussionUnfortunately, this palette does not pass WCAG[1], which seems a weird thing to not have tested for if you've made a palette intended for web UI. If you own/manage this project: install the Axe browser extension[2], run it on your site, go "...oh...oh no..." and then unfortunately, take accessibility seriously and get to revising =/ [1] https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/ [2] https://www.deque.com/axe/…
Comment linking /axe/browser-extensions/
on “Nord – An Arctic, north-bluish color palette”Submitted Why Unique ID Attributes Matter (2016) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI've worked with people from Level Access[1] and Deque[2], there is also TPG[3]. I'm not sure how much money they cost, but they are the real experts in the industry. Some people on Fivver offer services, but I don't know how qualified they are. [1] https://www.levelaccess.com/ [2] https://www.deque.com/ [3] https://www.paciellogroup.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Best way to test accessibility of a website?”Submitted EU Runs World’s Largest Accessibility Test as a story · 1 points
HN discussionMicrosoft recently open sourced[1] one of the main tools they use for web accessibility testing. Accessibility Insights for Web ( https://accessibilityinsights.io ) is a Chrome extension that guides you through doing an accessibility assessment of a website. It includes a combination of automated checks (using aXe[2]) and assisted/guided manual checks. Its rules are based on the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guideli…
Comment linking /axe/
on “Ask HN: Best way to test accessibility of a website?”Submitted Why Unique ID Attributes Matter (2016) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionHello Flávio, Before I give you feedback on your wonderful set of checklists, wanted to give you some background for this message. Last Thursday was Global Accessibility Awareness Day, which I cofounded. A day meant for developers and designers to learn about the importance of coding accessibility. This is for the purpose of making it possible for people like my friend Tommy Edison to use the web. Here's a demo of h…
Comment linking /axe/
on “A Collection of Dev Checklists”Submitted What to Expect from the First Public Working Draft of WCAG 3.0 as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI am one of the maintainers of the axe accessibility testing engine the Slack team is using. It's awesome to see such a detailed writeup of how folks are building on our team's work! We publish the engine (axe-core) and the "core" playwright integration library Slack is using (@axe-core/playwright) as open source, but if you're interested in what the Slack team has described in this blog, we also have a paid offerin…
Comment linking /careers/senior-accessibility-tool-developer
on “Automated accessibility testing at Slack”Submitted Why Unique ID Attributes Matter (2016) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI'm not entirely sure if it's the same use case, but I think the de facto tool here is axe: https://www.deque.com/axe/ (IIRC, it's also integrated in Webhint and Google's Lighthouse.)
Comment linking /axe/
on “Equal Access: Automated accessibility checker for web projects”Submitted The anatomy of accessible forms: the problem with placeholders as a story · 1 points
HN discussionBasically when it comes to screen readers, they will parse content as it appears in the DOM as blocks of items to be read aloud. This is why it's so important to use semantic HTML and truly understand how you are structuring your content. A good rule of thumb is to not try to force a voice reader to have a certain cadence (like making multiple paragraphs into a single paragraph element so it gets read as one) or nes…
Comment linking /
on “Common Mistakes to Avoid in HTML”Submitted Axe 3.0 has arrived – here’s what you need to know as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
