| 1 | # 🤖 Accessibility |
| 2 | |
| 3 | Eleven Messenger is for groups of real people — families, friends, small teams — |
| 4 | and that only works if everyone in the group can actually use it. This page is |
| 5 | our accessibility statement: the standard we hold ourselves to, what that means |
| 6 | in practice, and where we honestly are today. |
| 7 | |
| 8 | ## The commitment |
| 9 | |
| 10 | **All web surfaces target [WCAG 2.2](https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/) Level AA.** |
| 11 | That covers the chat client itself, the mini-apps, the join/invite/onboarding |
| 12 | pages, the admin console, and the home server pages. |
| 13 | |
| 14 | **The native iOS and Mac apps target the same bar**, interpreted through |
| 15 | [WCAG2ICT](https://www.w3.org/TR/wcag2ict-22/) and Apple's platform |
| 16 | accessibility features: full VoiceOver support, Dynamic Type, Reduce Motion, |
| 17 | and Increase Contrast. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | Why WCAG 2.2 AA: |
| 20 | |
| 21 | - **2.2 is the current W3C Recommendation** — committing to an older version |
| 22 | (2.0/2.1) would be committing to yesterday's bar, and 2.2 AA is backwards |
| 23 | compatible with 2.1 AA (it adds criteria; the only removal, 4.1.1 Parsing, |
| 24 | is obsolete). |
| 25 | - **AA is the level the world converges on.** Legal and procurement baselines — |
| 26 | the EU's EN 301 549 (European Accessibility Act), US Section 508, ADA case |
| 27 | law — all reference Level AA. Meeting 2.2 AA satisfies all of them. |
| 28 | - **AAA is not a blanket target by design** — the W3C itself says AAA cannot be |
| 29 | satisfied for all content. We adopt individual AAA criteria where they're |
| 30 | cheap and kind (e.g. generous contrast, no timing pressure), but AA is the |
| 31 | commitment. |
| 32 | |
| 33 | ## What this means for anyone changing the UI |
| 34 | |
| 35 | The bar for new and changed UI, web and native alike: |
| 36 | |
| 37 | - **Keyboard first.** Every action reachable and operable by keyboard, with a |
| 38 | visible focus indicator. Panels, menus, sheets, and the lightbox manage focus |
| 39 | on open/close and never trap it. The sticky composer and headers must not |
| 40 | obscure the focused element (2.4.11). |
| 41 | - **Everything has a name.** Icon-only buttons get labels; menus and dialogs |
| 42 | get proper roles; form fields get real labels. We already build DOM nodes |
| 43 | instead of `innerHTML` — give those nodes their ARIA at the same time. |
| 44 | - **Gestures have alternatives** (2.5.7): anything done by dragging or swiping |
| 45 | (to-do reorder, swipe-to-reply) also works with simple taps/clicks, and touch |
| 46 | targets are at least 24×24 CSS px (2.5.8). |
| 47 | - **Contrast holds in both themes.** AA ratios (4.5:1 text, 3:1 large text and |
| 48 | UI components) in light *and* dark — including secondary text, placeholders, |
| 49 | and focus rings. |
| 50 | - **Motion is optional.** Ambient scenes (the smoke-and-motes boot and |
| 51 | space-switch), grace-period animations, and transitions respect |
| 52 | `prefers-reduced-motion` / Reduce Motion. |
| 53 | - **Never color alone.** State (unread, online, done, error) is always carried |
| 54 | by text or shape as well as color. |
| 55 | - **Native parity.** iOS/Mac views carry accessibility labels and traits, |
| 56 | survive the largest Dynamic Type sizes, and expose row actions to VoiceOver. |
| 57 | |
| 58 | ## Where we are today |
| 59 | |
| 60 | Honestly: **partial conformance**. Accessibility affordances exist throughout |
| 61 | (ARIA attributes across the web client, VoiceOver labels in the native apps), |
| 62 | but we have not yet completed a systematic audit against 2.2 AA. That audit — |
| 63 | surface by surface, with fixes landing as small PRs — is tracked in |
| 64 | [issue #569](https://github.com/elevenmessenger/messenger/issues/569). This |
| 65 | page's status will be updated when the sweep completes. |
| 66 | |
| 67 | ## Feedback |
| 68 | |
| 69 | If something in Eleven Messenger doesn't work with your assistive technology, |
| 70 | or works badly, we want to know: |
| 71 | [open an issue](https://github.com/elevenmessenger/messenger/issues) describing |
| 72 | what you were doing, the platform/AT you use, and what went wrong. Accessibility |
| 73 | reports are treated as bugs, not feature requests. |
| 74 | |
amadan