Accessibility

The standard we hold ourselves to

BookieKids aims to meet WCAG 2.2 level AA. Every colour pair the interface uses is measured against that standard by an automated test that fails our build, so a contrast failure cannot ship quietly. Two pairs failed when we first measured, and both were fixed in the palette rather than patched on one screen.

What the product does today

• Every story can be read aloud by the device's own voice, in the language the story is in. Nothing is recorded and nothing is sent anywhere.
• The sentence being read is lit, and a band can follow it down the page for eyes that lose their place.
• Text size, line and letter spacing, and the typeface can all be changed from the Aa button while reading.
• A plain typeface with distinct b, d, p and q — the four letters dyslexic readers most often swap.
• A high-contrast mode that pushes every text pair past 7:1.
• Controls a child touches are at least 44 pixels; the read-aloud button is 64, because it is the one control a pre-reader has to find without help.
• Nothing in the product requires a drag, a long press or a double tap.
• Nothing times out or moves on by itself.

From a keyboard

The whole reader works without a mouse, and the focus ring is never removed — only re-drawn so it stays visible on every background.

• Right arrow or space — turn the page
• Left arrow — the page before
• P — start or stop the voice
• R — hear that sentence again
• Escape — close the panel, then close the book

What does not work yet

This is the part of a statement worth reading, so it is not buried.

• Reading settings are remembered on the device they were set on, not yet on the child's profile. A household with two phones has to set them twice.
• No browser ships a Malagasy voice. Malagasy stories are read by a French voice, which is closer than English but is not right.
• Illustrations carry a generic description rather than one written by the author, so a screen reader can say a picture is there but not what is in it.
• Two thirds of our interface components still ship without a role or a label, so parts of the product outside the reader are quieter to a screen reader than they should be. This is the number we are working on.

Tell us what we got wrong

If something here stopped you or your child, write to hello@bookiekids.com and say what you were trying to do. We would rather hear it than not.