qualitylab

the station

axe-core: the maintainers' stated ceiling on automated WCAG detection

tier IV/2026/axe-core documentation

https://github.com/dequelabs/axe-core

Method

none stated

Population

none stated

What it does not show

No methodology, corpus or independent replication is linked, so 57% cannot be distinguished from a marketing estimate. It is unknown whether other engines detect the same, a smaller or a larger share. The number is used here as the vendor’s own stated ceiling and explicitly not as evidence of a measured split.

Deque Systems

The tool’s own documentation states: “With axe-core, you can find on average 57% of WCAG issues automatically. Additionally, axe-core will return elements as ‘incomplete’ where axe-core could not be certain, and manual review is needed.” By the same claim, an average of 43% of issues are not caught by automation.

Tier IV: A vendor capability claim in product documentation with no disclosed corpus, ground truth or methodology. Widely cited and not verifiable as a measurement, so it is graded as an argument rather than a study.

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