What is the difference between a11y and pa11y

[koenpunt]

I've stumbled upon pa11y, and –apart from that it uses HTML CodeSniffer to generate an accessibility report instead of Chrome Accessibility Tools– it looks very similar.

So what would be the differences? And otherwise, are there features in there, which also could be valuable for a11y?

[addyosmani]

Thanks for bringing this up! I wasn't aware of pa11y.

My familiarity with HTML CodeSniffer isn't great, but the benefit of this module is that you get access to the same level of accessibility tooling we bake into the Chrome Accessibility Developer Tools, which amongst other things support newer web platform APIs like Shadow DOM.

One area we could certainly improve on is #26 - do you know how well pa11y tackles webapps at the moment (in particular, apps where views/templates are loaded via JS)?

[kelveden]

I've been delving into this a little myself lately from a starting point of pretty much complete ignorance and it appears to me that pa11y is focussed on the WCAG standards (section508, WCAG2A, WCAG2AA, WCAG2AAA from the --help).

The Crome Accessibility Developer Tools (and therefore a11y) on the other hand seem a little more arbitrary (I can't find what link, if any, exists to WCAG) but do include audits for WAI-ARIA which pa11y does not.

@addyosmani are my comments on a11y seem accurate?

[addyosmani]

To the best of my knowledge, the Chrome Accessibility Developer Tools focus on checking common accessibility problems including WAI-ARIA but don't specifically cover WCAG standards. @alice may be able to comment further as to whether this is indeed the case.