Start and stop App Accessibility scans

Start and stop automated app accessibility scans in your test cases for precise control over what gets scanned.

You can run targeted accessibility checks on specific screens, workflows, or components in your mobile app. This helps you focus testing on the areas that matter most to your users.

Why control accessibility scans?

Developers and SDETs often need to focus accessibility testing on specific parts of a workflow. By controlling when scans start and stop, you can:

• Limit scans to relevant sections of your test cases.
• Avoid reporting issues outside your team’s scope.
• Optimize test execution and reporting.

Run targeted scans in your automated tests

App Accessibility Testing runs all scans by default. You can configure your existing functional test automation suite to enable or disable these automatic scans and control when scans start and stop inside your test cases using APIs. You can also use APIs to perform scans at specific points in your test cases.
This page covers the following topics:

• Scan specific sections or points in your test case
• Exclude specific test cases from automated tests
• API reference
• Example usage

Scan specific sections or points in your test case

You can configure your test suites to disable automatic scans and run them only on specific sections or points in your test cases.

In this scenario:

• Automatic scans are completely disabled.
• You can run scans on specific sections of your test case using the start and stop scanning API methods for your framework.
• You can also use the performScan API method to run scans at specific points in the test case.

Build configuration to run scans on specific sections or points

In your functional test automation suite, use the following configuration:

...
services: [
  ['browserstack', {
    ...
    accessibility: true,
    accessibilityOptions: {
      wcagVersion: 'wcag22aa',
      autoScanning: false
    }
  }]
],
...

...
accessibility: true
accessibilityOptions:
    wcagVersion: wcag22aa
    autoScanning: false
...

Exclude specific test cases from automated tests

You can configure your test suites to run targeted scans by excluding specific test cases from automatic scans. You can also use APIs to control scans at runtime and run scans on specific sections or points in your test cases.

In this scenario:

• Automatic scans are enabled.
• You can exclude specific test cases from the automatic scans using the excludeTagsInTestingScope configuration.
• You can use the start and stop scanning API methods for your framework to run scans manually. These scans include the test cases excluded using excludeTagsInTestingScope.
• You can also use the performScan API method to run scans at specific points in the test case, regardless of the scanning state.

Build configuration to exclude specific test cases

In your functional test automation suite, use the following configuration:

...
services: [
  ['browserstack', {
    ...
    accessibility: true,
    accessibilityOptions: {
      wcagVersion: 'wcag22aa',
      autoScanning: true,
      excludeTagsInTestingScope: ["<test1>", "<test2>"] // Test cases with these tags are excluded from automatic scans
    }
  }]
],
...

...
accessibility: true
accessibilityOptions:
    wcagVersion: wcag22aa
    autoScanning: true
    excludeTagsInTestingScope: ["<test1>", "<test2>"]  # Test cases with these tags are excluded from automatic scans
...

API reference

Use these API methods to control scans at runtime. The method names depend on your framework:

import com.browserstack.accessibility.AccessibilityUtils;

Example usage

These samples start scanning, run a scanned command, stop scanning, and then run a single scan. The samples use the configuration from Scan specific sections or points in your test case, where autoScanning is false.

// This sample assumes autoScanning is set to false in your configuration.
await browser.startA11yScanning();    // Eligible commands after this point trigger scans

var loginButton = await $(`~Login`);
await loginButton.click();            // This command is scanned

await browser.stopA11yScanning();     // Commands after this point don't trigger scans

await browser.performScan();          // Runs a single scan, regardless of the scanning state

import com.browserstack.accessibility.AccessibilityUtils;

// This sample assumes autoScanning is set to false in your configuration.
AccessibilityUtils.startScanning(driver);      // Eligible commands after this point trigger scans
driver.findElement(By.id("login")).click();    // This command is scanned
AccessibilityUtils.stopScanning(driver);       // Commands after this point don't trigger scans

AccessibilityUtils.performScan(driver);        // Runs a single scan, regardless of the scanning state

References

• Define test scope in App Accessibility Automated Tests
• Configuration options for App Accessibility Automated Tests
• Getting started with App Accessibility Automated Tests