Accessibility & Accommodations

The application is designed and tested against WCAG 2.2 AA. In practice that means keyboard operability throughout, visible focus indicators, sufficient colour contrast, adequate target sizes, and content that reflows without horizontal scrolling when zoomed.

• Full keyboard operation without a mouse
• Screen reader support across the interface
• Contrast and target sizes meeting AA thresholds
• Reflow at high zoom without horizontal scrolling

Lemon says: If a student reports something that isn't keyboard-reachable or a screen reader can't announce, please report it — that's a bug, not a limitation.

Several conversation controls were built for accessibility and turn out to help a much broader range of students — anyone anxious, anyone in a noisy room, anyone at a lower proficiency level.

• AI Text — the AI's turn shown as text, which helps with hearing difficulties, processing time, and simply missing a word
• Pause and Resume — time to think without the session running on, unless the activity limits or turns off pauses
• Push-to-talk — control over exactly when the microphone is listening
• Speaking pace — a slower AI is easier to process for many students, not only beginners

Lemon says: Setting pace to 0.85× helps far more students than the ones with a formal accommodation.

Several accommodations can be delivered by building a second copy of an activity with different settings, rather than by exempting a student from the work. This is usually a better outcome for everyone.

• Extra processing time — a copy with slower pace and a longer maximum time, or, where pauses are limited, a Pause allowance for that student
• Reduced pressure — a copy with a lower level and stronger scaffolding
• Anxiety — completion-only assignment, no rubric, and explicit permission to retry
• Fatigue — a copy with a shorter minimum time so a session is achievable in one sitting

Lemon says: Copy the activity, change the settings, assign the copy. The student does the same task at a workable difficulty.

Some students have accommodations that make spoken assessment inappropriate — speech disabilities, severe anxiety, or a documented exemption. The platform is a speaking tool, so the accommodation has to come from your course design rather than from a setting.

• Substitute an equivalent written or asynchronous task for the same objectives
• Assess the same objectives in a one-to-one meeting instead
• Where possible, keep the activity available ungraded so the student can still use it if they want to

Lemon says: Keeping it available but ungraded is often the kindest option. Some students want to try without the stakes.

This is the accessibility issue most specific to speaking practice, and it deserves stating plainly. Speech recognition is measurably less accurate for speakers with accents, speech differences, and lower proficiency — which means the students most likely to be misread are those already most disadvantaged.

Lemon says: When a transcript looks wrong for a particular student, listen to the audio before you act on it.