Accessibility statement

Our aim

YahHeard is a catalogue of independently built software. Its pages should work for someone using a screen reader, a keyboard, a switch device, a magnifier, voice control, a high-contrast setting or a small phone in bright sunlight — and for someone who simply finds moving backgrounds distracting. Accessibility is treated as part of building each page, not as a fix applied afterwards.

The standard we work to

The target is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at level AA, published by the W3C. In practice that means, among other things:

• Text and controls meet AA contrast ratios in every theme, in both light and dark mode.
• Nothing is communicated by colour alone: statuses always carry a word as well.
• Pages reflow to a single column at 320 pixels wide and remain usable at 400% zoom.
• Every control has a visible focus indicator and an accessible name.
• Pages use proper landmarks, a logical heading order and descriptive link text.
• Images that carry meaning have text alternatives; decorative images are hidden from assistive technology.
• Motion can be reduced or switched off, and nothing important exists only in motion.

What you can adjust

The Display button in the header — also in the mobile menu, the footer and the search palette — opens a panel where you can change:

• Light or dark mode, or follow your device. The Dark Mode / Light Mode button in the header switches it directly.
• Visual theme (9 in all, each with a light and a dark version), accent colour and colour-vision palettes for status colours.
• Text size up to 150%, interface size, line spacing, letter spacing, heavier text, narrower reading width and the Atkinson Hyperlegible typeface.
• Reduced motion, animation speed, background particles, parallax, page transitions and autoplay.
• Underlined links, a stronger focus outline, simplified visuals, reduced transparency and blur, and larger tap targets.

Five presets set several of these at once, and selecting a preset again switches it off and restores your own settings. Your operating system’s reduced-motion and contrast settings are honoured automatically until you choose otherwise. Choices are saved in your browser on this device only; see cookies and storage.

How it is checked

• An automated contrast check covers every text and background pairing in every theme and mode, and stops the site being published if any pair falls below AA.
• Automated accessibility scans (axe) run against the main pages and representative project pages in desktop and mobile layouts, against a project page in every theme and mode, and with the menu, search, display panel and lightbox open.
• Every page is checked at 320 pixels wide for sideways scrolling, and every internal link, image and anchor is checked to resolve.
• Browser tests check keyboard operation, focus handling in menus and dialogs, reflow at 320 pixels, and behaviour at increased zoom and text size.
• Pages are checked by hand with a keyboard and at large text sizes.

These checks run in Chromium and WebKit. Firefox could not be run in the test environment used for the most recent checks, so it has not been tested this time.

Known limitations

Stated plainly, because a claim of perfect accessibility would not be credible:

• The site has not been tested with every screen reader on every platform, and it has not been audited by an independent accessibility specialist.
• Screenshots are described in text, but a description can never be fully equivalent to seeing the software.
• The interactive demos on some project pages are browser recreations with keyboard support and labelled controls; they are demonstrations, not the apps themselves.
• Some project pages link to official external sites, whose accessibility we do not control.

The apps and games

Accessibility in each app or game differs, and each project page lists what that project actually implements — screen-reader labels, text scaling, reduced-motion modes, colour-blind palettes or alternatives to gestures, depending on the project. Where a feature has not been verified on a physical device, the project page says so.

Reporting a problem

If anything on this site is hard or impossible to use, please say so. The most helpful report names the page, what you were trying to do, what got in the way, and — if you are happy to share it — the device, browser and any assistive technology you use.

A public contact address has not been published yet, so this page does not show one rather than showing an address that would not work. The contact page will carry it as soon as it is available.

Keeping this current

This statement is reviewed whenever the site changes in a way that affects accessibility, and at least once a year. The checks described above run every time the site is built.