What we aim for the standard
We build to WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Where a game cannot meet a guideline without ceasing to be a game, we say so below rather than quietly claiming otherwise. A VPAT 2.5 report is available for anyone who needs the criterion-by-criterion detail.
What is in place today
- Full keyboard play. Arrow keys or WASD walk the island, Enter or Space opens the booth you are standing at, and every answer anywhere in the app can be typed on the physical number keys. The on-screen keypad is a convenience, not a requirement.
- Captions on all character speech. Every spoken line is subtitled on screen, and the caption appears even when sound is muted — so a deaf or hard-of-hearing student, or a classroom running silent, misses nothing.
- Focus you can actually see. On the island the focus ring is a thick ink outline with a yellow halo, not the browser's hairline. Several games also move focus onto the main button when a run ends; the rest are being brought in line.
- Contrast-checked palettes. Text colors are measured, not eyeballed; the brand hues have darker text-safe variants used wherever a color carries words.
- Reduced motion is honored. When a device asks for less motion, particle effects and celebration animations switch off automatically.
- No flashing. The fastest pulse in the app is about one cycle a second — nothing approaches the three-flashes-per-second seizure threshold, and no screen flashes white.
- Color is never the only signal. Locked booths carry a padlock, answers come back in words as well as color, and fluent facts are marked with a star.
- The math loop reaches screen readers in every game. The current problem is announced in words ("7 times 8"; "Platforms: 3 plus 4, 12 divided by 6"), answer feedback is a live region, and wins, strikes, downs and hull changes are all spoken — in all seven games.
- Typing speed is calibrated out. A short warm-up measures each child's own typing pace and adds it back into every speed judgement, so a slow typist — or a student with a motor difficulty — is never scored as a slow mathematician.
- Progress is never taken away. However a run ends, every fact answered along the way is already saved. Game mechanics never touch a student's math record.
What we know is still weak honestly
- The spectacle stays decorative. The math loop is fully announced, but the frog's hop and the fireworks are flavor — a screen-reader user gets the whole fluency experience, not the whole show.
- Timed challenge is essential to the arcade. Six of the seven games have a hidden clock: that pressure is the game, and WCAG 2.1 allows a time limit that is essential to the activity (Success Criterion 2.2.1). We take that exception seriously rather than as a loophole — see the next section.
The untimed path is always open
No child has to play against a clock to make progress. Critter Garden has no chase and no timer — it only accumulates, and any pressure at all begins after the child has already won. Axel's Gym is one-on-one coaching on whatever fact family a student keeps missing, and the strategy board at the heart of its daily Power-Up is untimed — no clock, no countdown, and every miss is corrected on the spot rather than punished. Both run the identical fluency engine as the fast games and earn identical credit, so choosing the calm route costs a student nothing at all.
Tell us what is not working
If something in iMath is hard or impossible for your child to use, please say so — it goes straight into the next update. Talk to your teacher, or write to justin@teachinge.org. Please include the game or screen, the device, and any assistive technology in use. We aim to reply within a school week.