Accessibility

What works now

These have been built and checked (see “How we tested” below).

• Comfort settings on every page (the Comfort button, or Alt + C): a dyslexia-friendly font, bigger text, line and letter spacing, coloured backgrounds including a dark one, high contrast, a reading ruler, and shorter chunks of text.
• Listen buttons read the story, questions and hints aloud using a voice that is already on the device. Words are highlighted as they are read.
• Audio adventure: the whole adventure can be listened to, with the story, question and choices read in order.
• Describe the picture: every scene has a short text description, and a longer one you can open.
• Calm mode: no movement, no sound effects, no stars or streaks, nothing on a timer, and a Next chapter button so children move on when they are ready.
• Spelling support: answers that are close but misspelt (for example “horse” as “hors”) can be accepted, without accepting wrong answers.
• Simple words versions of questions and hints where they are available.
• Keyboard only: everything can be done with the keyboard, with a clear focus ring. Shortcuts are listed under Keyboard shortcuts in the comfort settings.
• Screen readers hear one clear message after each answer (for example “Correct! Well done.”), not a stream of updates.
• Zoom and small screens: pages work at 400% zoom and on phones without sideways scrolling.
• Teacher settings: teachers can choose ready-made supports for a device, lock them, save them for named children (first name or initials only), and move them to another device with a file or a short code.

Using a screen reader

• Each page starts with a “Skip to content” link. In an adventure, the chapter title is a heading, so you can jump to it with your screen reader’s heading key.
• After you send an answer, you will hear whether it was right and then the next chapter heading. Stars and streaks are announced once, in words.
• If you use a screen reader, you may prefer to turn the Listen buttons off in comfort settings so two voices don’t talk at once.
• The answer box is a normal text box. Press Enter to send and Shift + Enter for a new line.

Speaking answers instead of typing

Children can say their answers using the dictation that is built into their device, such as the microphone key on an iPad or Android keyboard, Windows voice typing (Windows + H) or Mac dictation. Underhill Adventures does not record or listen to anything itself. Words that dictation sometimes adds, like “full stop”, are ignored when checking answers, and numbers like “3” count the same as “three”.

Privacy: voices and dictation

• Listen buttons only use voices that run on the device. We never use online voices, so the story text is not sent anywhere. If a device has no offline voice, the Listen buttons are hidden and we explain why.
• We do not use the browser’s online speech recognition. Dictation is handled by the device’s own keyboard, under the settings the school or family has chosen.
• Comfort settings and children’s first names or initials are kept only in this browser on this device. Nothing is sent to us. A teacher can remove all of it from the class summary page.

Known issues

• We have not yet completed testing with NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver or TalkBack by real users. Those tests are planned before schools use it.
• How voices sound, and which offline voices are available, depends on the device. Some Chromebooks and Android tablets have no offline voice until one is downloaded in the device settings.
• Spelling support helps with many common mistakes, but it can’t understand every spelling, so a child may sometimes need to try again.
• “Simple words” versions are not yet written for every question.
• The pictures are illustrations with text descriptions. There is no sign language version yet.
• The Story Builder is a demo. In demo mode it never sends the idea anywhere; a live version would send only the idea text, and would be described here before it is switched on.

How we tested

Last tested on 25 October 2026 with:

• Google Chrome (desktop and phone screen sizes) with automated checks: axe-core (WCAG 2.2 A and AA) and Lighthouse accessibility.
• Keyboard-only play-through of the adventures, 320px reflow and text-spacing checks, and colour contrast checks in every background and contrast setting.
• Tests of the Listen buttons with the network switched off, checking that only on-device voices are used and nothing is downloaded.

We aim to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at level AA.

Tell us what isn’t working

If something gets in the way for a child, we would really like to know. Please email contact@underhilladventures.com. Tell us the page, the device and what happened.