Accessibility statement -- Wilder Rhymes
========================================

Last reviewed: 12 September 2026
Applies to: https://www.wilderrhymes.com/ (all pages)

Nobody certifies websites as accessible. The W3C does not, and no other
body does either -- anyone selling a "certified accessible" badge is
selling you nothing. The legitimate mechanism is a self-declared
conformance claim backed by an honest statement, which is what this page
is. We also do not use an accessibility overlay widget, and will not:
they intercept the page and break the assistive technology underneath,
which is the opposite of the point.


Conformance status
------------------

Wilder Rhymes is PARTIALLY CONFORMANT with WCAG 2.2 Level AA.

"Partially conformant" means most of the standard is met, and we know
where it is not. The exceptions are listed below, by name, rather than
left for you to discover.

We treat WCAG 2.2 Level AA as a floor rather than a target. It is a
superset of what Section 508, ADA Title II and the European
Accessibility Act each point at, so one standard covers all of them.


What has been tested
--------------------

  * Automated audit (axe-core, WCAG 2.0/2.1/2.2 A and AA rulesets),
    run against the live page with results on screen, in all four
    themes and with the colourblind-friendly palette on and off.
  * Keyboard-only operation of search, filters, results and word lists.
  * Reflow at 320 CSS pixels: no horizontal scrolling.
  * Heading structure, landmark regions and live-region announcements.
  * Colour contrast measured per theme rather than eyeballed.
  * Pointer target sizes against 2.2's new 24x24 minimum.

Automated tools catch a well-known minority of real barriers. They are
where this work starts, not where it ends -- see "Known gaps" below.


What is already in place
------------------------

  * Four themes, including true high-contrast dark and high-contrast
    light, and a separate colourblind-friendly palette that is
    independent of the light/dark choice.
  * Visible focus indicators throughout, with a dedicated high-contrast
    focus ring in the high-contrast themes.
  * Full keyboard operation. Focus traps and focus restoration in
    dialogs and popovers; Escape closes them.
  * No information carried by colour alone -- every rhyme tier is named
    in text as well as coloured.
  * No audio anywhere. Nothing in this product requires you to hear it.
  * Plain-English respellings and IPA on words, not just phonetic
    symbols.
  * Filter errors and result changes announced through live regions.
  * `prefers-reduced-motion` respected.
  * No time limits, anywhere.


Known gaps -- what is NOT yet conformant or complete
----------------------------------------------------

  1. NO SCREEN-READER LISTENING PASS HAS BEEN PUBLISHED YET.
     Phonetic notation is the hard case in a product like this: "K AE1 T"
     read aloud is gibberish, and IPA is worse -- readers tend to skip
     unfamiliar glyphs, spell them out, or announce Unicode names. We
     have not yet completed and published a listening pass covering
     phonetic strings and respellings on each platform's native reader.
     Until that is done, treat screen-reader support as untested rather
     than as working.

  2. Long result lists cannot be collapsed.
     A search can return several hundred words across eight tiers. There
     is currently no way to collapse a tier you are not using. This is
     the single largest cognitive-load barrier in the product and it is
     a known, accepted defect, not an oversight.

  3. Part-of-speech labels are jargon.
     Abbreviations such as "Intj" appear without a plain-language
     equivalent.

  4. No VPAT / Accessibility Conformance Report is available.
     If you need one for a purchasing decision, ask -- see below.


Reporting a problem
-------------------

If something here does not work for you, please tell us. A specific
report ("the rung headings are unreadable in the light theme with my
screen magnifier") is worth more than a general one, but send whatever
you have -- a vague report is still better than silence.

  Email: teamwilder@wildercode.com

We aim to respond within five working days. Accessibility defects are
treated as bugs, not as feature requests, and they are not queued behind
other work.

If you contact us and are not satisfied with the response, say so in a
reply and it will be escalated rather than closed.


Technical notes
---------------

Wilder Rhymes relies on HTML, CSS and JavaScript. JavaScript is required
for search results; the page is not usable with scripting disabled, and
we do not currently offer a non-scripted fallback.

This statement was prepared on 12 September 2026 by self-evaluation. It
has not been independently audited by a third party.