Add accessibility CI job (Playwright + axe-core WCAG 2.1 AA scans) #168

Context

Accessibility testing CI job, follow-up from closed PR #41.

PR #41 proposed adding a Playwright + axe-core WCAG scan as a new Quality Gate job. The underlying work is sound: the current CI has no accessibility coverage, and the frontend (csv-table-hub-main) has had accessibility issues shipping unnoticed.

Scope

• New Quality Gate job accessibility running Playwright + axe-core against the Vite dev server
• Backend accessibility test files under tests/accessibility/ (conftest.py for Playwright fixtures, test_accessibility.py with WCAG 2.1 AA scans across the main pages)
• Install step for Playwright browsers in CI (playwright install chromium)
• Marker and job-exclusion wiring: accessibility tests run only in the dedicated job, integration (postgres service) excludes them with --markers "not accessibility"

Out of scope

• Frontend-side accessibility fixes (sonner toast contrast, select accessible names, aria-labels on download menu, upload progress bar) that Group tests into unit, system, SIT, performance, accessibility and UAT #41 bundled in. Those live in csv-table-hub-main (Lovable-sourced code we're reconsidering, see Spike: rebuild M4 review screen in Streamlit (1-day time-box) #154) and should be a separate PR by whoever owns the frontend direction decision.
• Branch protection update to require this new job (separate, after the job runs green a few times)

Done when

• The job appears in .github/workflows/quality-gate.yml as a pull_request job
• It runs green on a trivial PR touching only backend
• tests/accessibility/test_accessibility.py runs locally with python -m pytest tests/accessibility -v and reports pass/fail counts
• Known limitation documented: the backend scans will fail against unfixed frontend a11y issues; failures are expected until the frontend fixes land

Related

• Group tests into unit, system, SIT, performance, accessibility and UAT #41 (closed, superseded by #A + this + #C)
• #A: Test folder reorganisation (prerequisite — tests/accessibility/ folder structure)
• Spike: rebuild M4 review screen in Streamlit (1-day time-box) #154: Streamlit spike (may change what frontend we're testing)