THE SIMULATION LAB

Accessibility

Every student in the room should be able to play.

This is a working statement, not a compliance badge. It says what has been done, what is still in progress, and how to tell me when something blocks a student.

Last updated 26 July 2026.

The target

The goal for this website and for the simulations is WCAG 2.2 Level AA. Some parts of the catalogue meet that today. Others do not yet, and this page will not pretend otherwise.

What is in place

  • No login for students. Nothing here requires an account, a password, or a verification step, which removes a common barrier before it starts.
  • Keyboard operation. Site navigation, links, and forms work with a keyboard alone.
  • Reduced motion. Pages respect the operating system's "reduce motion" setting; decorative animation and the homepage intro are skipped when it is on.
  • Readable at any size. Layouts reflow down to small phone widths and remain usable at high browser zoom.
  • Text alternatives. Meaningful images carry alt text; decorative images are hidden from screen readers rather than described.
  • Read-aloud and translation. Many simulations include built-in text-to-speech and machine translation into any language, for multilingual learners and students with reading accommodations.
  • Touch as well as mouse. Drag-and-drop activities are built to work from a finger on an iPad, not only from a mouse.

Known gaps

Being specific is more useful than a blanket claim:

  • Screen-reader testing has been done page by page rather than as a full formal audit. Some interactive components announce their state better than others.
  • A small number of colour pairings in older products sit below the 4.5:1 contrast ratio for body text. These are being corrected as each product is revised.
  • A few 3-D and canvas-based activities are inherently visual. Where that is true, the activity is paired with a non-visual alternative path wherever one can be built, but not every one has that yet.
  • No third-party accessibility conformance report has been commissioned.

Using the simulations with accommodations

  • Every activity runs in an ordinary browser tab, so a district's existing extensions, screen readers, and magnifiers work with it.
  • Teachers can enable read-aloud and translation from the product's settings, per class.
  • Written responses can be dictated with the device's own voice typing.
  • Word-count minimums and time expectations are teacher-configurable, so they can be adjusted to match an IEP or 504 plan.

Reporting a barrier

If a student cannot do something on this site or inside a simulation, please email thesimulationlabedu@gmail.com with the page or product name, what the student was trying to do, and the device or assistive technology in use.

This is a one-person operation, so I cannot promise a fixed response window — but accessibility reports go to the front of the queue, ahead of new features, and I will tell you honestly whether a fix is possible and when.