[RFC] Update axe-core to the latest version 4.8.2

[ankit-dq]

Summary

Hi Team,

The storybook addon for a11y is a very nifty and useful tool for finding accessibility issues.
I noticed that it is currently running on axe-core 4.2.0 .
There have been a number of updates to the axe-core version, with the latest update being 4.8.2 .
This update in axe-core has a lot of bug fixes and has also made considerable improvements and enhancements to the axe-core rulesets.

It would be great if you could upgrade the storybook-addon-a11y to run using the latest axe-core version 4.8.2

Problem Statement

I noticed that https://www.npmjs.com/package/@storybook/addon-a11y is currently using axe-core 4.2.0 .
There have been a number of updates to the axe-core version, with the latest update being 4.8.2 .
This update in axe-core has a lot of bug fixes and has also made considerable improvements and enhancements to the axe-core rulesets.

Non-goals

No response

Implementation

Upgrade the axe-core version to the latest i.e. 4.8.2.

Prior Art

No response

Deliverables

No response

Risks

No response

Unresolved Questions

• Using a to do list makes it easy to resolve the questions as we move the RFC along.

Alternatives considered / Abandoned Ideas

No response

[JaiRai0304]

I too uses @storybook/addon-a11y package to scan for accessibility issues for my components.

It would be really helpful if the package is updated to use the latest axe-core version of 4.8.2

Thank you!

[JReinhold]

I think this is a great idea, the only concern is if we should consider this a breaking change or not?

If upgrading axe-core introduces more rules, or renames rules, users would all of a sudden get different reports when they upgrade Storybook, which could be considered breaking.

A counter point is that it's clearly just minor bumps for axe-core so they don't consider it breaking changes.

Thoughts @shilman

[JaiRai0304]

I don't think it breaks anything. But yes it can definately report additional accessibility issues based on the latest ruleset of axe-core. In my opinion, Users would love to have their contents to be tested against the latest ruleset.

[shilman]

Yeah that sounds like a breaking change. Good thing 8.0 is on the way!

[ndelangen]

The dependency we have on axe-core is here:

storybook/code/addons/a11y/package.json

Line 56 in 8466cf9

"axe-core": "^4.2.0"

It's version range is prefixed with ^ meaning users' should be able to use it with version 4.8.x already.
In fact I'd assume most users would already be doing so.

Maybe I'm missing it, but what is the change actually being requested here?