axle — a11y / WCAG scanner for VS Code

Scan any URL for WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility violations from inside VS Code. Powered by axe-core 4.11, the same engine used by axle, Pa11y, Lighthouse, and Microsoft Accessibility Insights.

What it does

• Command palette → "axle: Scan a URL" — type any public URL, get a violations report in a side panel.
• Command palette → "axle: Scan localhost dev server" — scans http://localhost:3000 (or whatever you've set as axle.defaultUrl). Useful while developing.
• Command palette → "axle: Open last scan result" — re-render the previous result without re-scanning.

Each scan returns a list of WCAG 2.2 AA violations grouped by severity (critical / serious / moderate / minor), with the offending HTML snippets and links to axe-core rule docs. If you have an axle API key, every scan also returns a public shareable /r/<id> URL.

Why use this and not just open a browser

• No context switch — stay in your editor.
• Keyboard-only flow — Ctrl+Shift+P → type → Enter.
• Same engine as the axle CI — what you see locally is what the GitHub Action will catch on PR.
• No telemetry, no analytics — the extension makes one HTTP request to axle's hosted scanner per scan, and that's it.

Configuration

Open VS Code settings and search for "axle". Three options:

Pricing

The extension is free. Scans use the public free-scan endpoint with a daily rate limit (5 scans / IP / day at the time of writing). For unlimited scans + AI fix suggestions in the GitHub Action, see axle pricing.

Privacy

• The URL you scan is sent to axle-iota.vercel.app/api/scan. Nothing else.
• The extension does NOT scan files in your workspace, your local filesystem, or your git history.
• No analytics, no telemetry, no error reporting beyond what VS Code itself does.
• See axle privacy policy for the hosted scanner's data handling.

How it differs from other a11y extensions

• Microsoft Accessibility Insights for Web — browser extension; this is a VS Code extension.
• Web Accessibility (Maxim Salnikov) — lints HTML files statically; axle scans the rendered page.
• axe-linter (Deque) — also static HTML linter; same difference.

axle's value is scanning the rendered page — what your users actually see — not the raw HTML you write. Static linters miss everything that's introduced by client-side JavaScript, runtime ARIA, or dynamic content.

Companion tools

License

MIT. Source: github.com/asafamos/axle/tree/main/packages/axle-vscode.