State Abstraction

In automated web GUI testing, state abstraction is the process of grouping web pages that exhibit the same behaviour from a testing perspective into a single representative state. Effective state abstraction prevents testing tools from repeatedly exploring functionally identical pages and directs exploration toward unvisited application states, maximising coverage. Poor state abstraction can cause crawlers to loop indefinitely on dynamic pages or miss distinct states entirely. The accuracy of state abstraction directly affects the thoroughness of automated accessibility audits conducted during web crawling.