Accessibility, and where its limits lie
Qardbox declares seven accessibility features in App Store Connect. This page says for each one how it works in the app, and after that what the app does not do. You should know where you stand before downloading, not after.
The seven declared features
Apple requires every declared feature to cover all the common tasks on its own: the study session, first launch and settings. That is the standard the seven below are measured against, and testing was done on device.
- VoiceOver
- The card is ONE element with four actions: flip, known, not known, favourite. Every swipe therefore has an equivalent named alternative, and no step of studying depends on a gesture. The charts in the stats tab carry a label and a value per data point, plus an audio graph in the rotor. Focus is moved where content appears in place, such as the next card after a rating.
- Voice Control
- All controls are native SwiftUI elements and inherit their spoken names from the same labels as VoiceOver. The card itself is addressable through named actions: “Tap Known” works even when the action row is hidden. That was verified on device.
- Larger Text
- The interface follows dynamic type up to the largest size iOS offers. The card first scales the text down and becomes scrollable on overflow instead of cutting it off. Chart heights grow with the text rather than staying fixed.
- Dark Interface
- A consistent dark scheme with its own colour values, not an automatic inversion. Light, dark and system can additionally be chosen in the app's settings.
- Differentiate Without Color Alone
- Known and not known carry an icon AND a word, not just green and red. In the privacy board the rows also differ in the shape of the icon. Under the subject share chart there is a list with a colour dot, the name as text and the figure: the name carries the information, not the colour.
- Sufficient Contrast
- The interface uses semantic system colours and responds to Increase Contrast: areas are then drawn flat instead of with a gradient, and muted tones become stronger. The glyph colour on a subject tile is computed at runtime rather than set, following the WCAG luminance rule.
- Reduced Motion
- The card flip becomes a cross-fade, the swipe-away a fade-out, and ring pulse, accordion and celebration are dropped. Material surfaces become opaque under Reduce Transparency.
Assistive Access
This is an iOS feature that reduces the whole device to a few large controls. Qardbox brings its own calm interface for it: choose a subject, read the question, reveal the answer, rate, finish.
Progress is the same as in the full app, because rating goes through the same path as the swipe and the Action button. What is missing there is missing on purpose: filters, statistics, settings and favourites.
Who switches what on here
Qardbox never turns on an iOS accessibility feature itself. Every row in the settings says who does the work, and the four states look the same; they differ only in the control.
The rule behind it lives at exactly one place in the app: the effective setting is the system state OR the local switch. A local switch adds, it never overrides.
Nine switches of its own, all off by default
Beyond the seven features Qardbox has its own screen with nine switches: highlight controls, reduce motion, minimum text size, bold text, invert colours, increase contrast, reduce transparency, visible alternative to every swipe, and reduced stimulation. With no accessibility feature active and no switch set, the app behaves exactly as it did before.
Five limits, named rather than hidden
These places do less than you might expect. They are listed here so nobody takes them for an oversight.
- “Highlight controls” does not reach toolbars. The button style squeezes the label there, so twenty bar buttons remain system buttons. iOS handles them itself when Button Shapes is on anyway.
- “Bold text” does not reach text that sets its own weight. Headings stay unchanged; the row in settings says so.
- The widget does not evaluate accessibility text sizes. Widgets are considered separately in the declarations, so this does not limit the claim above.
- The orange widget variant is knowingly below AA contrast. It concerns a decorative surface, no text and no control, and is recorded in code as a deliberate exception.
- Orange as the daily accent reaches 2.98 to 1 in light mode and therefore misses the 3 to 1 for graphical objects, as the only colour in the default palette. The accent lands on graphics only, never on text; anyone who needs it there too turns on high colour contrast.
In the classroom
In classes that work with VoiceOver, Voice Control or very large type, learning software often fails on small things: a gesture with no alternative, text that gets cut off. Both were built for here from the start.
With no account and no sign-in, a single device is ready the moment it has been downloaded, and because Assistive Access works on the same set of cards, everyone in a group is at the same point.
What this means for schools and special education is set out at For children and schools.