Accessibility

1. Our commitment

OTSeen aims to be usable by everyone, including people who use assistive technology such as screen readers, screen magnifiers, or keyboard-only navigation. Accessibility is an ongoing effort, not a one-time project, and this page describes where we stand today.

2. Standard we target

We target conformance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at Level AA. That standard covers things like color contrast, keyboard operability, readable text sizing, meaningful heading structure, and clear labeling of interactive controls. We have not yet completed a full conformance audit against it.

3. What's built in today

On 2026-09-08 we ran a combined automated and manual WCAG 2.2 AA audit: axe-core against every rendered route (guest, member, moderator, and admin sessions, both light and dark themes), plus a manual code-level review of every interactive component in public/js/site.js and every color/contrast token in public/css/site.css. Every violation the audit found has been fixed. OTSeen's design includes:

• A "skip to main content" link at the top of every page for keyboard users.
• Light and dark themes, plus a setting that follows your system's theme, to support users who need higher or lower contrast or reduced glare. Every text/background color pairing in both themes has been measured and meets or exceeds WCAG AA contrast (4.5:1 for normal text); input, textarea, and select borders use a separate, higher-contrast token from purely decorative dividers so form controls meet the 3:1 non-text contrast minimum.
• Text-only content throughout the platform, so nothing depends on interpreting an uploaded image or file.
• Semantic landmarks and labels, such as labeled navigation regions and form fields, throughout the interface, with a unique accessible name per landmark and exactly one level-one heading per page.
• Visible focus indicators for keyboard navigation, including roving-focus keyboard support (arrow keys, Home/End, Esc, and focus restoration on close) in the moderation context menu, the account menu, and the ticker search combobox.
• Every form error and hint is programmatically associated with its field via aria-describedby, not just placed nearby visually, so screen readers announce it when the field is focused.
• Color is never the only signal for meaning: up/down values carry a leading +/- sign or an explicit direction icon in addition to color, and vote/TRUE-FALSE/AGREE-DISAGREE splits are labeled with text, not color alone.
• Every interactive control (buttons, links, form fields) meets the 24×24px minimum target size, or qualifies for the "inline text" exception.
• Motion is minimized site-wide for anyone whose system requests reduced motion (prefers-reduced-motion).
• The sandboxed filing document viewer (/filing/:id) uses a titled, sandboxed <iframe> so assistive technology can distinguish it from the rest of the page.

4. Known limitations

We want to be upfront about where OTSeen currently falls short:

• The 2026-09-08 audit combined automated tooling (axe-core) with a manual code review against WCAG 2.2 AA - it was not a full pass with real assistive technology (NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver, TalkBack). We still recommend, and have not yet completed, a human AT-user testing pass across the site's key flows (posting, voting, the moderation menu, private messages, and two-factor setup).
• Automated tooling cannot fully verify some keyboard interactions in every browser/assistive-technology combination (for example, native dialog Escape-to-close behavior) - the underlying code was verified directly, but real-device testing would give higher confidence.
• Data-dense views, such as ticker pages with live price changes, have not been independently tested for how well they work with screen magnification or reflow at very high zoom levels on small viewports.
• Some legal/reference pages (Terms, Privacy, Community Rules) are long single-scroll documents; a per-section "back to top" control has not been added.

5. Feedback and contact

If you run into an accessibility barrier on OTSeen, or if assistive technology you rely on does not work the way you expect, please tell us. Reports help us prioritize fixes.

Contact: [email protected] [placeholder mailbox, to be provisioned].