Accessibility

First Six is built so every student can use it. We target WCAG 2.1 Level AA across both the student and staff apps. This page lists the controls we ship, the gaps we know about, and how to tell us about something we missed. We would rather publish a shorter list that is true than a longer one that is not.

What you can change

These live in the student app, under Settings → Accessibility. The staff Console follows your operating system and browser settings (theme, reduced motion, and browser zoom) but does not yet carry its own in-app controls. That gap is listed below.

• Text size. Default, Large, or Larger. Scales every component via design tokens, not just the body.
• High contrast. On / off toggle. Lifts borders, removes shadows, swaps neutrals for full-contrast pairs.
• Reduce motion. On / off toggle. Disables every transition and animation. The OS-level prefers-reduced-motion setting is honoured automatically in both apps; the in-app toggle is for when you want it independent of the OS.
• Theme. Light, Dark, or System.

What we test against

• Colour and contrast. Primary and secondary body text passes AA (4.5:1) against every surface it is drawn on, in both themes. Measured, not assumed: in the light theme the secondary text colour is 4.62:1 on the lowest-contrast surface it appears on, and the error colour is 4.60:1. The success and warning colours are status accents, used on tinted pills, icons and borders: they meet the 3:1 threshold that applies to non-text and large text, and are not used for small body copy.
• Keyboard reachability. Every interactive element is reachable via Tab, including the weekly check-in, which is a custom slider and is arrow-key operable with Home and End. Both apps carry a skip-to-content link. Focus rings use a dedicated --ring token that survives custom button styling. Modals respect Escape to close.
• Screen reader semantics. Icon-only buttons have aria-label; toggles use role="switch" with an explicit accessible name; the check-in reports its current value with aria-valuetext. Live regions announce toasts and help-request failures.
• Motion. Every transition is wrapped in @media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce). The check-in animations, the kanban scroll, and the timetable deck all fall back to instant on reduced-motion devices.
• Zoom on phones. Neither app restricts scaling: the viewport sets no maximum-scale and no user-scalable=no, so pinch-zoom works everywhere, as SC 1.4.4 Resize Text requires. Every text field on a phone is at least 16 px, which is also what stops iOS Safari zooming the page uninvited when you tap into one.

Known gaps

We hold ourselves accountable to the things we haven't done yet. Current self-assessment:

• No independent audit. We publish a full Accessibility Conformance Report (VPAT 2.5, covering WCAG 2.1 AA, Section 508 and EN 301 549), but it is our own evaluation, not a third party’s. We will commission an independent audit before a paid university rollout.
• Appearance controls in the staff Console. Text size, high contrast and the in-app reduce-motion toggle are student-app only. Console staff get the OS and browser equivalents, which covers reduced motion and zoom but not the in-app text-size scale.
• Touch target sizes are not uniform. The shared components meet 44 × 44, but the staff Console overrides some icon buttons to 32 × 32 and caps some mobile buttons at 40 px. Being audited surface by surface.
• Modal semantics in the staff Console. Student-app modals carry aria-modal, aria-labelledby and Escape-to-close. Several Console dialogs are missing one or more of the three.
• Assistive-tech sweep pending. Manual NVDA + VoiceOver passes on the critical flows (sign-in, week page, help request, timetable editor) are scheduled before the next buyer demo.
• No sr-only utility yet. A handful of icon-only controls rely on aria-label; we are migrating to a hidden-text utility so context is always announced even when CSS fails.
• Focus management on route changes. Verified on the modals; verifying on full-page navigations (e.g. opening the staff drawer from the inbox).
• Captions and transcripts. not applicable today (no audio or video in either app). Will be in place before any media surface ships.

Procurement

If you are doing a HECVAT or accessibility-conformance review, we can supply:

• A short conformance statement (this page in PDF form).
• Our internal accessibility self-assessment (the ACCESSIBILITY.md committed in the source repo).
• A list of design tokens and their AA-tested colour pairings.
• Demo accounts for hands-on testing with assistive tech.

Telling us about a problem

If something is not working for you, please tell us. Email accessibility@firstsix.com.au with what you were trying to do and which assistive technology you are using; we treat accessibility regressions as a release blocker, not a backlog item.