Accessibility.

GPTQuest is a learning tool for grades 3 to 8, and it has to work for every student in the room. Accessibility features protect every user: students in grades 3 to 8, the teachers who run their classrooms, and the Account Owners who administer the school's account. Accessibility isn’t a checklist we run at the end of a release; it shapes how we build pages, write copy, and design game systems. This page explains what we target, how we test, where we’re strong, and where we’re still working.

Our standard

We target conformance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at Level AA, the current W3C Recommendation. That is one version above WCAG 2.1 Level AA, which is the standard the US Department of Justice set in 2024 for public schools and other state and local government entities under Title II of the ADA. WCAG covers four core principles: content must be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust across assistive technologies.

WCAG 2.2 added several success criteria beyond WCAG 2.1, such as minimum target size and alternatives to dragging movements. In June 2026 we completed that work: we measured the rendered size of every interactive element across the platform (over 2,000 targets, at desktop and mobile sizes) and enlarged the few that fell below the 24-pixel minimum, verified that keyboard focus is never entirely hidden behind fixed banners or notifications, and made onboarding pre-fill information a school already provided at signup. Sign-in never asks anyone to solve a puzzle: the bot check that protects it stays invisible unless it needs a click, and it never asks a student to transcribe distorted text or pick objects out of a grid of images. The password field is an ordinary one that a password manager can fill, so nobody has to hold a password in their head to get in. We now meet the WCAG 2.2 Level A and AA criteria that are new since 2.1.

In May 2026 we completed an internal audit of our public pages, the Teacher Control Panel, and the in-game World. Each surface was scanned with axe-core against WCAG 2.1 A and AA rules, then remediated until automated violations dropped to zero. Manual review covered keyboard navigation, focus visibility, screen-reader announcements, color contrast, and motion preferences.

What we’ve built in

• Semantic landmarks. Every page is built on real <main> and <nav> regions, with the navigation labeled, so screen-reader users can jump straight to the content or the menu instead of tabbing through the header every time. Panels that sit alongside the main content, like the World’s accessibility panel, are labeled <aside> regions.
• Keyboard support across the app. Every interactive element (buttons, links, form fields, and the in-game canvas) is reachable with the keyboard and shows a visible focus ring.
• Color contrast. Text and meaningful UI meet or exceed WCAG AA contrast ratios (4.5:1 for normal text, 3:1 for large text and graphical objects).
• Reduced motion. We honor the operating-system prefers-reduced-motion setting. When it’s on, transitions and decorative animations stop across the site, and the moving scene at the top of our homepage is replaced with a still image.
• Form labels and error messages. Every input is labeled, and errors are announced to a screen reader rather than only shown in red, whether they appear under a form or as a pop-up notification. We don’t use color alone to signal validation state.
• Image alt text. Meaningful illustrations have descriptive alt text. Decorative images are marked aria-hidden so they don’t add noise to a screen reader’s output.

Accessibility Mode for the game World

GPTQuest’s game World is drawn on an HTML canvas, which is inherently opaque to assistive technologies: a screen reader can’t inspect what’s painted on a canvas the way it can inspect HTML. To make the game playable for students who rely on screen readers or who can’t process the visual scene, we built Accessibility Mode.

When a player turns Accessibility Mode on (Settings → System), a structured panel appears alongside the World. It lists nearby quest markers, NPCs, and map exits as focusable buttons with their direction and distance, plus the player’s current inventory totals. The panel reopens and collapses with a dedicated toggle button on every viewport size, so it’s easy to bring up only when needed. The canvas itself also exposes role="application" with an aria-live announcer. Each time the player arrives on a new tile, it reads out the closest quest marker or map exit within range, with the direction and distance to reach it, so a screen reader can describe a scene it cannot otherwise see.

Conformance status

We claim partial conformancewith WCAG 2.2 AA across the platform, and we meet all of the success criteria that WCAG 2.2 added over 2.1. “Partial” is the honest framing for any product that ships actively-developed features and integrates third-party content; below is where the gaps live so schools can evaluate accurately.

• Public marketing pages, signup, signin: conformant.
• Teacher Control Panel (/cpanel): conformant for the core flows (classroom roster, assignments, progress reporting, billing).
• In-game World (/world): conformant for the surrounding DOM (GameDock, modals, navigation). The canvas surface is covered by Accessibility Mode as described above.
• Quests (solo and multiplayer): mixed. Text-based quests work well with screen readers. Quests with rich visual or audio elements (Lyra the Songweaver, Royal Game of Goose, The Crimson Dragon) currently rely on visual cues for some game states; we’re iterating on each quest’s narration coverage.
• AI-generated content: images and music produced inside quests are generated at runtime, so nobody can write alt text for them in advance. Songs are the better case: the lyrics are the student’s own words, and they stay on screen as text beside the player, which is a genuine text alternative. Images are the harder case. A saved creation carries the title the student gave it as the image’s accessible name, and an image still on screen inside a quest is labeled for what it is, but neither is as good as alt text a person wrote. We report images as partial support rather than claiming an exemption, because WCAG 1.1.1 does not provide one for artwork generated during gameplay.

Tested with

We maintain an automated Playwright + axe-core audit that scans every key route, and we run it during each accessibility review pass. Manual testing has been done against:

• VoiceOver on macOS Safari and iOS Safari
• NVDA on Windows Chrome and Firefox
• Keyboard-only navigation across the full app
• 200% browser zoom and reflow at 400px viewport width
• OS-level Reduce Motion enabled

Known limitations

We track accessibility issues like any other product bug. Active known limitations:

• The in-game canvas does not yet describe rich tile detail (terrain type, decorative props) inside Accessibility Mode; only navigable game objects are listed.
• A few quest-specific UIs (the songwriter step in Lyra, the board layout in Royal Game of Goose) need additional screen-reader narration for animation transitions.
• Some teacher tools that show large data tables (full classroom rosters, multi-classroom progress reports) prioritize density over screen-reader ergonomics; we’re adding inline summaries and sortable accessible alternatives in upcoming releases.

Report a barrier

If you, your student, or a colleague hits an accessibility barrier in GPTQuest, please tell us. We treat reports as P1 and aim to acknowledge within two business days. The fastest path is our Contact Us page (select “Report” from the dropdown) or by emailing connect@gptquest.ai with the page URL, the assistive technology you were using, and what you expected versus what happened.

For school procurement

Schools evaluating GPTQuest for purchase often need a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) or Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR). Contact us about VPAT availability via Contact Us, noting your district name and the timeline you’re working with. For data-handling and FERPA / COPPA terms, see our DPA for Schools.

How this page changes

We’ll update this page each time a substantive conformance change ships: new audit results, new features that move the needle, or resolved limitations. The “Last updated” date at the top reflects the most recent revision.