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Accessibility

Français · Type: reference + explanation · Audience: player · Context: player's browser · Status: ready · Applies from: 4.3.0

The player (DOM painter) · contract: stable · verified by CI (support matrix of 4.4.0, 2026-10-23): Chromium on the desktop, mouse and keyboard; Chromium and WebKit at a phone's size, touch and keyboard (emulated); axe-core on every screen (not a WCAG claim) · automated checks: jobs e2e; CI plan e2e; 2 test files · people's passes: phone-both-renderers not run (#83), code-wheel-human not run (#78), blind-playtesters not run (#76) · known limits: no-screen-reader-pass

What a quest'n'click game offers a player who uses the keyboard, a screen reader, larger text or less motion; what is checked by machines, what only people can check, and where those checks stand. True from 4.3.0 (verb keys and their announcement); the rest is older and says since when.

What the engine does

Every game made with the engine gets these, without its author writing anything:

• The whole game plays at the keyboard: Tab reaches the verbs (the arrows move inside the grid, and the chosen verb is announced as pressed), the scene's targets (one hidden button per visible hotspot, prop or character, in the scene's order), the bag and the tools. A conversation's choices and the map's places take the focus when they appear (arrows, Enter). Space or Enter advances a line of dialogue. Escape closes what is on top (a menu, the map, a transcript, a cutscene's or minigame's Skip), otherwise opens the pause menu, whose focus stays inside. The keys: Controls.
• A live region announces the room you enter, each line of dialogue with who speaks, and each item you gain. The "tap to continue" marker has a name for screen readers (ui.advance, "Continue" by default).
• Verb keys (a game's choice, since 4.3.0): a verb with a letter is announced with that shortcut (aria-keyshortcuts), and the settings can turn the keys off, as WCAG 2.1.4 asks of single-letter shortcuts.
• Images are decorative unless named: the scene is reached through its targets, an item through its name; an empty bag slot is left out of the accessibility tree.
• Minigames play to their end at the keyboard, not only skip: pick and hide (the options and hiding spots are named buttons, the arrows move, Enter picks), pipes (the arrows walk the grid, Enter turns a tile), runner (▲ / W jumps, ▼ / S ducks), stroke (◀ ▶ in turn at a calm rhythm; holding a key is "too fast"), scratch (the arrows move a coin over the silver layer, the revealed text is announced) and cables (Enter on a plug picks it up, Enter on a socket plugs it in). The minigame takes the focus on its first control; Skip is always reachable. The Remix code wheel turns with buttons, arrows or a gamepad, announces each turn, and can be printed.

Text, motion, sound and colour

• Text: a larger text size, and a slower text speed that keeps each line longer on screen, in the settings; a readable font when the game ships one. A line with a voice clip stays as long as the clip plays; a tap skips any line.
• Motion: "Reduce motion" removes shake, camera glides, parallax, particles and transitions; the system's own reduced-motion preference does the same and stops the interface's animations.
• Sound: every spoken line is also written. A sound that matters can be captioned on screen ("[A door slams upstairs]") when the author wrote a caption; the captions are on by default. Whether a puzzle needs to be heard is the author's choice. Music, sound and voice have separate volumes.
• Colour: the verbs, items and topics carry their names as text. There is no high-contrast mode or colour setting: a game's colours are its author's.

What is checked, and what is not

By machines, in CI, on every change that can affect the player:

• npm run e2e -- --axe runs axe-core on the title, a room, the pause menu and the ending; npm run e2e:a11y on a conversation menu, the map, the save and load slots, the overwrite and restart confirmations, and every bundled minigame as it opens. A serious or critical violation fails the run; the list of accepted rules is empty.
• npm run e2e:a11y also wins each bundled minigame in a real browser with key presses only, reading the page as a player does.
• The solver's winning path is replayed at the keyboard (npm run e2e -- --generic --keyboard), in Chromium and, since 3.3.1, in WebKit.

What the engine can claim is therefore "tested at the keyboard, no serious or critical axe violation on the screens checked". It is not a WCAG conformance claim.

Limit · no-screen-reader-pass No person has played a quest'n'click game with a screen reader for a release yet. The checklist exists (docs/dev/SCREEN-READER.md: VoiceOver on iOS or TalkBack on Android, the title, a room, an action, an item, a conversation, the map, the pause menu, a minigame, the ending), and the support matrix lists a VoiceOver or NVDA pass under "checked by people (not yet done)". As of 4.4.0, the people's passes that read this surface, phone-both-renderers (#83), code-wheel-human (#78, the code wheel's text alternative by a screen-reader user) and blind-playtesters (#76), are not run.

Accessibility and fair play in speedruns

A speedrun category declares the inputs it allows (mouse, touch, keyboard, gamepad, macros). An accessibility option is never an implicit cheat: the text speed, the text size, reduced motion and the readable font change nothing in the in-game time (a line costs the same logical time at every speed), and the keyboard's and the screen reader's targets are the same actions as a tap. A category that forbids an input says so; the inputs a run used are declared by the player's browser (its word, as the real-time clock is). See Speedrun for players and, for authors, Speedrun for authors.

Report a barrier

A barrier is a bug. Open an issue on the project's tracker with the screen, your device, browser and assistive technology, and what you heard or could not reach. A session file (pause menu › Save › Export session) helps the author replay what you did.

References

• Stability and support: the player's statuses, its passes.
• The code: src/engine/dom/a11y.ts (the focus trap, arrow navigation), src/engine/dom/input.ts (the keys), tests/dom/minigames-keyboard.test.ts (five minigames won with key events).

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