Accessibility Statement

1.Our commitment

VoxSign exists to remove a communication barrier. An accessibility tool that is itself hard to use has not removed anything, it has moved the problem. So accessibility here is not a settings page bolted onto a finished product; it is a constraint on every screen we build.

This statement covers https://accessibility.voxsign.co.ug and the VoxSign web application served from it.

2.What is built in

These are in the app now and you can turn them on under Profile, then Accessibility. They are stored against your account rather than one browser, so they follow you to any device you sign in from.

Text size

Three sizes, applied at the root of the page so the whole interface scales with them. Text is measured in relative units throughout, which is why the layout grows with the setting instead of clipping. At the largest setting the reading measure widens too, so long paragraphs do not become a wall.

Reduced motion, on by default

Animation and transitions are collapsed to nothing. It is on by default rather than off, because for a good number of people motion is not a preference but a problem. Every loading state is designed to still read as loading when nothing is moving.

High contrast

Black text on white with every border strengthened, for readers who need more separation than the default palette gives.

Colour blind support

A colour adjustment aimed at deuteranopia and protanopia. Separately, and more importantly, colour is never the only thing carrying meaning: a status is a word as well as a colour.

Easy navigation

Enlarges every interactive target to at least 44 pixels and thickens the focus ring, for touch, tremor and low vision use.

Captions

Captions can be switched on or off in the player and sized independently, and they scale with your text size setting on top of that. Sign and text serve different people in the same room, so both are always available.

Keyboard operation

Every control is reachable and operable by keyboard, with a visible focus ring on every focusable element, not only under easy navigation. Each page has a skip to main content link as its first stop.

Screen reader semantics

Real headings in a real outline, labelled controls and landmarks, and every wait announced in words. A spinner with no announcement is treated as a defect in this codebase, not a style choice.

3.The standard we work to

We build to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 at Level AA, and to Level AAA for body text contrast where the design allows it.

What we can and cannot claim

We are not claiming full conformance, because we have not completed an independent audit of every screen. What we can say precisely is this: AA is the target every new screen is designed and reviewed against, the accessibility features listed above are implemented and in daily use, and the known gaps in the next section are the ones we have found so far.

We would rather publish that than a conformance badge we cannot evidence. A statement that overstates itself misleads exactly the people who most needed it to be accurate.

4.What is not there yet

Published deliberately, because a barrier you know about in advance costs you less than one you discover mid task.

• No independent audit has been carried out. Our testing is internal, with keyboard traversal, a screen reader pass, and each preference exercised on every new screen.
• Caption timing is approximate. The speech model returns the words it heard but not the moment each was said, so captions are positioned across short segments of audio rather than measured word by word. They land near the speech, not locked to it.
• The signing avatar is a 3D render and needs a browser and a device that can handle WebGL. On a low powered device it may be slow. The transcript and the captions do not depend on it, so the text remains available if the avatar struggles.
• The sign vocabulary is early, so many words have no sign yet. Where there is none the avatar stays idle rather than guessing. That is by design, and it still means gaps.
• Some older screens in the app still carry fixed colours rather than the theme tokens, so the dark theme does not apply evenly across all of them yet. Migration is in progress.
• The app interface is in English. It is not yet translated into Luganda.
• Speech recognition accuracy varies with background noise and with accent, and a misheard word produces a wrong caption and a missing sign.

5.An important limit on what this service is

VoxSign is an assistive aid. It is not a qualified sign language interpreter and must not be used as the only means of communication where a misunderstanding would have legal, medical, financial or safety consequences.

If you are an organisation with a legal duty to provide accessible communication, this service does not discharge that duty. It can help alongside proper provision; it cannot replace it. The terms of service set this out in full.

6.Tell us when something does not work

If any part of VoxSign is difficult or impossible for you to use, we want to hear about it, and we will treat it as a fault rather than a feature request.

• Email info@voxsign.co.ug, or call or message +256 770 680769.
• From inside the app, use Report a problem under Profile. It carries the details of the screen you were on.
• Or use the contact page if you would rather see the options first.

Please tell us the page, what you were trying to do, and what happened instead, plus the assistive technology and browser you use if you know them. We aim to acknowledge within two working days. If a fix is going to take a while we will say so and tell you what to do in the meantime, rather than going quiet.

If we do not respond well

Escalate to us by name at the same address and say that it is an escalation. Where a complaint concerns your personal data rather than accessibility, you can also take it to Uganda's Personal Data Protection Office, as described in the privacy policy.