Accessibility at BrightEleven

What we aim for

We aim to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.2 at level AA across the whole product, and to go beyond it on the child's screens in two specific ways: every tap target on a child screen should be at least 48 by 48 pixels, and no text a child reads should be smaller than 16 pixels.

BrightEleven is run by a private company, so the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations do not apply to it. We use the same shape of statement because it is the clearest one we know: a target, the evidence, the gaps, and a way to reach us.

What has been tested

Settings a child (or their parent) can turn on

All of these except the keyboard shortcuts are off by default and are changed from the child's own profile page or by the parent from the dashboard. None of them sends anything to a third party, with the one exception noted for read-aloud.

• Text size - a larger-text mode that scales the whole child interface.
• Reading font - four choices, including two designed for readers who find standard type hard: an easy-read face with distinct letter shapes and a high-legibility face with heavier strokes.
• Spacing - wider letter, word and line spacing.
• High contrast - a higher-contrast set of colours layered on whichever theme is active.
• Colour overlays - a tinted overlay over the whole screen, in several colours, for readers who find white backgrounds glare.
• Focus mode - offered on the question screens, hides the surrounding chrome so only the question and its answers remain.
• Calmer visuals and break reminders - turns off confetti, moving decorations and extra sounds, and offers a gentle prompt to pause during a long session.
• Read-aloud - reads each question and its options using the browser's own built-in voice. A higher-quality neural voice is available as an option; it needs a one-time download of the voice files from two content-delivery hosts, which is the one setting that makes a child's browser contact anyone other than BrightEleven, and it is off unless a parent or child turns it on.
• Sounds - the small interface click can be switched off.
• Keyboard shortcuts - on the question screens, a number or a letter key picks an answer; this can be switched off for a child who presses keys by accident or uses speech input. It is on by default.

The site also has light, dark, eye-comfort and greyscale themes, honours the operating system's reduced-motion and reduced-transparency preferences, and shows correctness with an icon and words as well as colour.

Known limitations

These are the gaps we know about today. We would rather list them than imply they do not exist.

• No assistive-technology user pass yet. Nobody who relies on a screen reader, switch access or magnification has yet been through the child journey with us. Until that has happened we do not describe the product as meeting WCAG 2.2 AA; we describe it as aiming for it.
• Diagram descriptions. Non-verbal reasoning questions, and some maths questions, are built around a picture. A screen reader announces each picture as a picture for the question, and where the answers are drawn inside it, which letters to look for - but the pictures do not yet carry a written description, so a screen reader cannot convey what is in them. Read-aloud reads the words of the question, not the picture.
• The neural read-aloud voice needs a download. The optional higher-quality voice is a sizeable one-time download and may be slow or unavailable on a poor connection; when it is not ready in time the browser's built-in voice is used instead.
• The 16-pixel text floor is not met everywhere. The words printed on the slices of the daily spin wheel, which can be as small as about 11 pixels on a phone, are smaller than our own rule; the list under the wheel repeats every slice at full size. This is on our list to fix.
• The fun-stuff tiles use 14-pixel text on narrow phones. On a phone narrower than 390 pixels, the three Buddy, Spin and Cards tiles on the child's home screen sit side by side, and the words inside them are 14 pixels, never smaller, so that all three fit across; a long buddy name may end in "..." there, and a screen reader still reads it in full.
• The iPhone app does not allow pinch-to-zoom yet. Inside the BrightEleven iPhone app, pinch-to-zoom is switched off and the iPhone's own Larger Text setting does not change the text size. The child's larger-text setting still works, but it is a modest step up, and the parent screens in the app have no way to enlarge text. The iPhone's own Zoom feature, which magnifies the whole screen, still works, the website can be zoomed as usual in Safari, and the Android app is not affected. The iPhone app also stays upright: it does not turn to landscape when the phone does, which the website in Safari does. We are fixing this.
• The homepage pictures move until they are paused. The floating cards beside the homepage headline drift and take turns to grow slightly. A Pause animation button directly under them stops all of it, and the choice is remembered on that device. If your device is set to reduce motion they do not move at all. They start moving by themselves for everyone else.
• Extra text spacing can overlap. If a reader turns on a browser tool that widens line, letter and word spacing (the WCAG 1.4.12 test), some labels on the child's home, profile and buddy pages, a comprehension question and the parent's child report can run into the text or button beside them. The app's own "More space between lines" setting does not do this.
• Interactive drawing. The rough-work pad is a drawing surface; it has a tap-to-join-dots alternative, but drawing itself is not something a keyboard alone can do well.

Tell us about a problem

If something on BrightEleven does not work for you or your child, or you need any of this in a different form, use the contact page. Say which page or screen it was, what you were using (for example a screen reader and which one), and what happened. A person reads every message, and problems that stop a child practising are treated as bugs, not feedback.

If you are not happy with how we respond, the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS) can advise on your rights under the Equality Act 2010.

About this statement

Prepared on 17 September 2026 from the tests and settings in the codebase on that date. It will be updated when an assistive-technology review has taken place, when a limitation above is fixed, and whenever a new one is found.

Last revised 10 November 2026, after our own checks found two problems this statement had not listed, both now fixed: the keyboard focus ring on the question screen's Check and Next buttons was too faint against the button's own colour, and now shows as a thick ring in the page's text colour, with the button turning pale, in every colour theme and with high contrast on; and on the Daily Quest the "How confident are you feeling today?" question opened as the page loaded and took the keyboard's first stop, so it now opens when the child checks their first answer, before that answer is marked, and the skip link is the first stop there as on every other child screen. In Windows high-contrast mode the read-aloud tick box now keeps a visible edge. The descriptions of the tap-target and text-size checks now say they run weekly. Revised before that on 13 October 2026, when the display-theme controls, rebuilt to meet the 48-pixel tap-target rule, were taken out of Known limitations, and question pictures began to be announced to a screen reader as pictures (still without a description). Revised before that on 12 October 2026, when the small "Lv" and "Next up" labels were brought up to the 16-pixel floor and taken out of Known limitations; the text-size and tap-target checks are described as the scripts they are; the keyboard-shortcut switch was added to the settings; calmer visuals now also stops moving decorations and extra sounds; and the text-spacing overlap was added to Known limitations. Revised before that on 9 October 2026, when the badge-icon numerals were removed from Known limitations, because the numerals were taken out of the badges in September; the parent, child and tutor screens gained a skip link; the sentence about skip links now names the pages that have one; and the iPhone app staying upright (it does not turn to landscape) was added to its zoom limitation. Revised before that on 8 October 2026, when the 14-pixel text in the home screen's fun-stuff tiles on narrow phones was added to Known limitations, and on 3 October 2026: the homepage now has a control to pause its moving pictures; the iPhone app's zoom gap and the spin wheel's small slice labels were added to Known limitations; and the description of the automated scans was corrected to the four themes they run in, with the buddy, spin and album screens added. Revised before that on 25 September 2026, when the 48-pixel tap-target gap on the display-theme controls was added and the description of how that check runs was corrected - it is run by hand, not on every change.