Accessibility

Churr is an app for meeting people, and a lot of the people it is for — somebody who has just moved to a new city, somebody starting again after a long stretch of not going out — are people who use the accessibility settings on their phone every day. This page says what works, what does not, and how to tell us when we have got it wrong.

Something not working? Email [email protected]. Tell us the screen and what your phone was set to. You do not need to know the name of the setting or use any particular words — "the plans list reads out in the wrong order with VoiceOver" is a perfect report. There is a Report an accessibility problem row in the app under Settings → About that writes most of this for you.

What we aim for

Our target is WCAG 2.1 Level AA, applied to a native iOS app rather than to a web page. WCAG is written for the web, so some of it translates directly (contrast, text resizing, not using colour on its own) and some of it has to be read across to what iOS actually offers. Where the two disagree we follow the platform, because the platform is what the person's other apps do.

We are not claiming full conformance. A conformance claim is a specific, testable thing, and making one we have not earned would be worse than saying where we are — which is: audited, mostly there, with the gaps listed below.

What is supported

VoiceOver

• Every button, switch, chip and row has a name that says what it is and, where it is not obvious, what it does. A plan reads as one sentence — "Beginners bouldering, Saturday 11 a.m., Boulderz Climbing Centre, you are hosting, 2 spots" — rather than as six separate stops.
• Cards group, so swiping moves you to the next plan and not to the next line of this one.
• Screen titles are headings, and arriving on a screen moves the cursor to its title rather than to the Back button.
• Sheets are modal: the screen underneath is not readable while a sheet is open, and opening one moves focus to its heading.
• Results that appear without taking focus — a saved setting, a declined introduction, switching the map to a list — are announced.
• Errors on a form are announced when they happen and are repeated as part of the field's name if you come back to it.

Dynamic Type

All text scales with your iOS text-size setting, including the accessibility sizes, and we test the main screens at the largest one (AX5). Containers grow rather than clip, and essential text is not truncated. Two exceptions, both deliberate:

• The tab bar labels do not scale. Five words on one line cannot survive the largest sizes in any typeface; the alternative is five truncated words, which is worse. Each tab carries a full sentence for VoiceOver, so nothing is lost there, and every screen the bar leads to scales normally.
• The logo does not scale. It is a drawn mark, not text somebody reads.

Reduce Motion

Supported and honoured live — you can switch it on while the app is open. The night sky stops drifting, cards stop fading in, and buttons and chips stop giving under a thumb. Nothing is removed; things stop moving.

Reduce Transparency

Supported. The soft colour washes behind screen titles become flat surfaces, so text sits on one colour rather than on a gradient that changes down its own height.

Bold Text

Supported. Churr uses its own typefaces, which means iOS cannot apply this setting for us, so we do it by hand: body copy, captions and labels step up to the next real weight we ship. We do not fake a heavier weight, because a synthesised bold is harder to read than the weight it started at.

Colour and contrast

• Every text and background pair in every palette, in both light and dark, is checked against 4.5:1 for text and 3:1 for graphics. It is a test that runs on every change, not a review somebody did once.
• Nothing is said with colour alone. A selected filter chip carries a tick as well as its fill, a free event says "Free", an evening event says "Night", and an approximate map location says "approximate".

Touch targets

Buttons, chips, map controls and list rows are at least 44 points, as a real box rather than an invisible margin around a smaller one.

The map

The Map tab has a List view that shows the same nests, events, plans and flock circles as rows you can read and act on in order. If you have a screen reader running, the list is what opens by default — you can still switch to the map, and switching sticks.

Audio

"Your twin's night" is spoken by your phone's own text-to-speech, at the speaking rate and in the voice you have already set — we never override them. The words are shown on screen next to the play button, for everybody and on every tier, and there is always a Stop control.

What is not there yet

These are the honest gaps. They are on the list, and the ones with a workaround say so.

• The map canvas itself. The map is a single element drawn by Apple Maps. We can label the pins on it, and we do, but a screen reader cannot walk them in a sensible order, count them, or tell two clustered pins from one. This is why the List view exists, and the List view is the supported path — not a lesser version of the map.
• Payment sheets. Buying Churr Plus opens Apple's own purchase sheet. That screen is Apple's and we cannot change anything about it, including its accessibility.
• English only. Every word in the app is English. There is no French yet, which matters in Canada and which we are not going to pretend is fine.
• Switch Control and Voice Control have not been tested end to end. Everything is a standard control with a name, so we expect them to work, but we have not sat down with them and we will not claim it until we have.
• Drawing your bird (Settings → Your bird) is a visual editor with no non-visual equivalent. Your bird is generated for you and is never required to be edited.

How to tell us

Email [email protected]. It reaches the two people who build Churr and nobody else. We read everything and we will reply.

Useful, if you have it: which screen, what your phone was set to, and what you expected to happen. Not required: any of the vocabulary on this page.

If you would rather report it from the app, Settings → About → Report an accessibility problem opens an email with the screen and your app version already filled in.

This page is reviewed whenever the app's accessibility changes, and at least at every release. The findings behind it, including the ones still open, are tracked in the project's own compliance notes.