Accessibility

What we’ve built in

• Not colour alone: every chart colour has a unique symbol shape and a name; charts print legibly in black and white.
• Keyboard use: all buttons, menus, dialogs and tabs work with the keyboard and show a visible focus outline. The Studio has documented shortcuts (press ?).
• Editing without a pointer: the Studio’s Cell editor lets you change any square by entering its row, column and colour. On the chart, arrow keys move a cursor and Space applies the current tool; the square’s colour is announced.
• Tracking without a pointer: arrow keys move the cursor, Space marks a stitch, R marks the row.
• Text alternatives: colour lists, stitch counts and progress are shown as text next to every chart, not only on the canvas.
• Reduced motion: if your system asks for reduced motion, homepage animations and transitions are replaced with static layouts and instant changes.
• Contrast: text colours were chosen to meet AA contrast on the site’s background (measured: body text 13.4:1, secondary text 5.8:1, link colour 5.0:1, white on the main button 5.6:1).
• Zoom and reflow: pages reflow down to 320 px wide; the chart canvas has its own zoom buttons and supports pinch zoom.
• Large print: PDF charts can be exported with extra-large 5.5 mm squares.

Known limitations

• Drawing on the chart is inherently visual. The cell editor and keyboard cursor make every edit possible, but creating a picture this way is slow.
• The chart canvas itself is exposed to screen readers as one image with a summary; individual stitches are reached through the cursor or cell editor.
• Colour pickers rely on the browser’s built-in colour input, whose accessibility varies between browsers.
• The crop frame can be moved and resized with arrow keys, but precise cropping is easier with a pointer.
• The stitch alphabets support Latin letters only.

Report a problem

If something doesn’t work with your assistive technology, please tell us via the contact page or at [email protected]. Include the page, your browser and assistive technology, and what happened. We treat accessibility bugs as bugs.