Accessibility Validation

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Summary

Introduce an accessibility validation layer to the Health Engine that continuously verifies every ReactEdge feature and rendered page meets a minimum accessibility standard.

The goal is not to replace accessibility tools, but to integrate with established accessibility standards and validation frameworks to provide continuous health assessment.

Objectives

• Validate rendered pages against recognised accessibility standards (e.g. WCAG).
• Detect accessibility regressions during deployment.
• Produce a structured accessibility health report.
• Record validation results using OpenTelemetry.
• Identify accessibility issues that require remediation.
• Integrate with existing accessibility tools where possible instead of implementing custom accessibility rules.

Validation

Examples include:

• Missing alternative text.
• Incorrect heading hierarchy.
• Missing form labels.
• Insufficient colour contrast.
• Keyboard navigation issues.
• Invalid ARIA attributes.
• Focus management issues.

Observability

Record accessibility validation as part of the Health Engine, including:

• Pages validated.
• Accessibility score.
• Number of issues detected.
• Severity of findings.
• Validation timestamp.

Future Enhancements

• Widget-level accessibility validation.
• Continuous accessibility monitoring.
• Automatic remediation suggestions.
• Integration with external accessibility platforms.
• Configurable accessibility policies.

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Implementation Notes

The Health Engine is not intended to implement accessibility validation itself.

Instead, it should orchestrate existing accessibility validation capabilities through a pluggable architecture.

The table below captures candidate integrations that should be investigated as the project evolves.

Validation	Candidate Systems	Notes
Accessibility audit	axe-core	Automated WCAG validation.
Accessibility audit	Lighthouse	Accessibility scoring and recommendations.
Accessibility testing	Playwright + axe-core	Validate accessibility during user journeys.
HTML validation	W3C Validator	Detect invalid HTML that may affect accessibility.
Colour contrast	axe-core	Verify colour contrast compliance.
Keyboard navigation	Playwright	Validate keyboard-only navigation.
Screen reader compatibility	axe-core	Detect common assistive technology issues.
WCAG compliance	W3C WCAG	Validate against recognised accessibility standards.

This table is intentionally non-prescriptive and should evolve as additional accessibility providers, standards and validation capabilities are identified.