Accessi­bility

What We Aim For

We aim for the web planner and this site to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at level AA, the level the Swiss public-transport industry standard for customer information recommends for apps and websites.

We do not claim that they meet it. Nobody has audited Spick Me against WCAG 2.1, and we know of gaps, listed below. This page says what we check, what we have not checked, and how to reach us when something stands in your way.

What Is Tested Automatically

Every change to the web planner is run through these before it is merged:

• An automated check in a real browser (axe-core) over the search form, a list of connections, an opened connection, the departure board and the station board — in the light and the dark theme, at a phone’s width and a desktop’s — against the WCAG 2.1 level A and AA rules a machine can test.
• Checks on the planner’s source: every button and field has a name a screen reader can say; text keeps a contrast of at least 4.5:1 against its background; a control that has the keyboard shows it; the search form is reached in the order from, to, search; and a search’s answer, or its failure, is announced.

The Android phone and watch apps are checked for a label and a touch target of at least 48 dp on every control of their main screens, and the phone app’s colour pairs for 4.5:1 contrast.

An automated check finds only the problems a machine can prove. It cannot tell whether a page makes sense when it is read aloud, or whether it still works at 200 % zoom.

What We Know Is Missing

• Nobody has yet used the web planner from start to finish with a screen reader, and we have not tested it with the text enlarged to 200 %.
• The automated check covers five screens of the planner. The day out, the maps, the coach diagram, “How far can I get?”, “Where should we meet?”, Spickle and Catch Me are not covered, and neither are the other pages of this site.
• On the departure boards a screen reader reads a departure as separate pieces — a time, a line, a place, a platform — rather than as one sentence, and a delay such as “+3” is read without saying that it means minutes.
• The journey map and the picture of a connection are drawings. The same connection is available as words: choose Text among the views of an opened connection.
• In the Android app, the departure board’s columns can cut off text at the largest font sizes. The iPhone app’s departure board does not follow the system text size, and the desktop app has not been tried with a screen reader.
• The legal pages — this one, the privacy policy, the terms and the legal notice — are in English only.

Tell Us About a Barrier

If anything on this site or in the apps is hard or impossible for you to use, please tell us — through the feedback form or by email to unfreqapp@gmail.com. Say which page or screen it was and what you were trying to do. Spick Me is run by two people in their spare time, so we cannot promise how quickly something is fixed, but every report is read, and a barrier is treated as a bug.

If you need a connection and the planner is in your way, the operators’ own timetables and their customer services remain available; where Spick Me and the operator disagree, the operator is right.