Bring the power of WAVE inside your enterprise with the WAVE Stand-alone API (Application Programming Interface) and Testing Engine. When you install the WAVE API or engine locally, you can easily analyze your entire web site—plus intranet, non-public, and secure pages. Just send the API a URL or execute the testing engine, and it will return the WAVE-generated data (in JSON or XML format) about that page's accessibility.
Use the WAVE Stand-alone API or Testing Engine to perform regularly scheduled audits of your site, integrate it into Continuous Integration processes (including headless test systems such as Selenium or Puppeteer), tie it into content authoring systems, implement it in your customized reporting or bug-tracking system, or... the sky's the limit! You'll never be tied into a pre-defined or restrictive analysis or reporting system. The stand-alone API provides you the powerful accessibility data that you can leverage in ways that work best for you.
The WAVE Testing Engine is a JavaScript framework for testing content within a web browser context. It will generate a JavaScript object with details about the WAVE items detected in the page being tested. It can easily be integrated into existing browser automation systems, such as Selenium, or be launched as a standalone testing platform using Node.js and Puppeteer.
The WAVE Stand-alone API analyzes pages in a self-contained, "headless" Chrome browser after scripting has been applied - full DOM analysis of a rendered web page!
These tools support all features of the WAVE API Specification, plus the following powerful features:
Being an API, there will likely be programming requirements for integration with your infrastructure. It's very customizable and expandable.
Not interested in building a system around the API? No worries! We provide several tools that use the API for general site analysis and reporting - such as a simple script for generating an easy-to-use spreadsheet of WAVE items for your entire site. This can provide a very cost-effective way of regularly auditing your site, with almost no technical or programming requirements. If you want full enterprise-level reporting out-of-the-box, check out Pope Tech.
The API will run on very minimal hardware (minimum 1CPU, 1GB memory, and 100MB storage), though will run faster and support more simultaneous requests with higher specs. The WAVE Stand-alone API runs on Linux, Mac, or Windows web servers with PHP and Node installed. Simply upload the files to a web site directory on your server, set a couple file/folder permissions, install a few dependencies, define a few configuration variables in one file, and you're up and running in minutes. To upgrade, you simply replace existing files with new ones.
The testing engine is simply a JavaScript library that can be integrated into browser testing processes via standard Node libraries or existing browser automation systems, such as Selenium or Puppeteer.
You can read the Stand-alone API Documentation and installation instructions at https://wave.webaim.org/api/SAdocs or documentation on the WAVE Testing Engine at https://wave.webaim.org/api/engine.
| Version | API Requests | Domains | Installations | Data Distribution | Annual License Fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | 100,000 | Up to 3 | 1 | Licensee only | $4000 |
| Expanded | 300,000 | Up to 10 | 3 | Licensee only | $8000 |
| Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Licensee only or as authorized | $12000 |
If you're interested in integrating WAVE into your own accessibility testing tools, please contact us for custom licensing details.
Pricing is structured to reflect volume and type of usage (number of times the API is accessed, number of site domains analyzed, and number of installations) and how the API data is used.
Contact us if you're interested in licensing the Stand-alone API. We can provide a trial version of the API upon request.