Pa11y CI

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Introduction

Pa11y CI is an accessibility test runner built using Pa11y and designed to run in continuous integration environments. Its README explains that automated testing can help prevent accessibility issues reaching production, and that you can test a list of URLs or a sitemap and report on the issues found. It requires a supported Node.js LTS version.

Configuration lives in a .pa11yci JSON file with defaults (standard such as WCAG2AA, timeouts, viewport, runners and ignore rules) and a list of urls, each of which can include actions such as clicking elements or filling forms before testing, or custom headers for authentication. Command-line options include --sitemap to test every URL in a sitemap, --sitemap-find/--sitemap-replace to rewrite production URLs to a staging host, --sitemap-exclude, --threshold to allow a number of errors per page before failing, concurrency settings and JSON or CLI reporters. Because Pa11y supports both the HTML_CodeSniffer and axe runners, Pa11y CI can use either or both engines. Version 5.0.0 was released on 5 October 2026.

The source code is at pa11y/pa11y-ci on GitHub under the LGPL-3.0 licence, with about 647 stars; the most recent commit was on 1 November 2026.

Features

1. CI-first: Exit codes and reporters built for pipelines.
2. Sitemap testing: Test every page listed in a sitemap.
3. Page actions: Interact with pages before testing.
4. Two engines: HTML_CodeSniffer and axe runners via Pa11y.

Pros

1. Free to use: Open source under the LGPL-3.0 licence, so the core tool costs nothing to use.
2. Actively maintained: The repository had commits as recent as 1 November 2026.

Cons

1. Automated checks only: Cannot replace manual and assistive-technology testing.
2. Headless browser needs: Requires a working headless Chrome in CI.

Usage and Links (Example)

npm install --save-dev pa11y-ci
npx pa11y-ci --sitemap https://example.com/sitemap.xml --sitemap-find example.com --sitemap-replace staging.example.com

.pa11yci:

{
  "defaults": { "standard": "WCAG2AA", "runners": ["axe", "htmlcs"], "timeout": 30000 },
  "urls": [
    "http://localhost:3000/",
    { "url": "http://localhost:3000/login", "actions": ["set field #email to ana@example.com"] }
  ]
}

Resources:

• Pa11y CI website

Pricing

Pa11y CI is free and open source under the LGPL-3.0 licence.

Recommended for?

1. Teams adding an accessibility gate to CI across many pages.
2. Sites with sitemaps wanting broad automated coverage.

Conclusion

Pa11y CI is a simple, effective way to run automated accessibility checks across a whole site in CI.