System & Accessibility Guide

BrightDots Game Center — for parents, carers, teachers and support staff. This document is written for adults. The in-game help is written for the children.

1. Who we built this for

BrightDots Game Center — Clara's Kitchen and Will's Gone Fishin' — is built for children aged roughly 4 to 9, including children with low vision, low hearing, and motor or cognitive differences.

2. Where we stand

Capability	Status	Detail
Complete play by voice alone	Met	Every command either game promises is implemented and tested — 30 of 30 in Gone Fishin', 14 of 14 in Clara's Kitchen.
Complete play by touch alone	Met	Voice is entirely optional. Both games are winnable without it.
Complete play by keyboard alone	Met	All controls, ingredient tiles and board squares are focusable buttons with visible focus indicators.
Screen reader support	Not tested	Every interactive element is labelled in plain English, and status, goals and clues are announced as they change — this may work with a screen reader, but we have not tested with one and do not claim it as supported. Voice control is the tested route for players who cannot see the screen.
200% browser zoom	Met	Layout, text and controls stay usable at up to 200% browser zoom — this has been tested and is supported.
Spoken content captioned	Met	Transcript panel, with adjustable text size.
Sound effects captioned	Met	Every non-speech sound is captioned on screen and logged to the transcript.
Error recovery and correction	Met	See section 4.
Adjustable pacing	Partly met	Slow-speech mode and transcript sizing exist. Pacing is a two-position switch, not a continuous control.
Adapts to an individual child's speech	Partly met	Recognition is biased toward game vocabulary, which materially helps unclear speech. We do not train a per-child voice model.
Tested with disabled users	Partly met	Designed with and tested by two children with low vision. Real, but a small sample of one disability profile.

3. What "voice-first" means here

Nothing is confirmed until it has actually happened

Our assistants operate under an Action-First rule: the game performs the action, and only then is it confirmed aloud. An assistant is forbidden from saying "heading north" unless the boat has already moved. A child is never told something happened that did not happen.

The words "tap" and "click" are banned

Assistants may never tell a child to tap or click, because many of our players cannot see where to tap. They say what to say, or name the control aloud — "press the big N arrow".

Key answers never depend on the network

"Say that again" and "where am I" are answered by the game itself, locally, without waiting on the voice service. For a child who cannot see the screen these are the recovery path, so they must work even when the connection is poor.

Position is described in words a child understands

Asked "where am I", Gone Fishin' answers with a landmark first and numbers second — "Your boat is near the top, on the left. Row 3, column 2. Your line is in the water." Grid coordinates alone mean nothing to a four-year-old. Clara's Kitchen answers with the situation instead: the challenge, what is already in the bowl, and the next step.

One goal at a time

Gone Fishin' runs a ladder of six quests; Clara's Kitchen sets a challenge each round. Only ever one goal is live, it is stated in one short sentence, and it always comes with a clue about what to actually do.

4. Failing well

Situation	What happens
Speech not understood	One short line — "Sorry, I didn't catch that" — and nothing more. No lecture, no repeated menu.
Child says something that sounds like quitting	Single words like "bye", "quit", "home" or "all done" ask first. They never quit outright. Quitting cannot be undone, so it must never depend on one misheard syllable.
Child missed what was said	"Say that again" replays the last thing the assistant said, verbatim.
Child is lost	"Where am I" describes the whole situation: position, current goal, next step.
Voice service keeps failing	After three consecutive timeouts the game switches itself to touch mode and says so. Play continues. It never simply stops working.
Assistant repeats itself	Prohibited. It may not say the same instruction twice in a row — it waits.
Command phrased differently	Commands resolve by meaning. "north", "up", "go up" and "move north" are one command; so are "fish", "cast", "cast line" and "start fishing".

5. Accessibility by need

Low vision

• Play surfaces are measured and resized to fill the available screen — the board and the ingredient tiles grow as large as the window allows.
• Colours were re-tested and darkened to meet WCAG AA. Several original choices measured as low as 1.6:1 and were replaced.
• Steering arrows are full-length triangles running the entire edge of the board. The visible arrow and the touch target are the same shape and size.
• Keyboard focus is shown as a thick gold ring, not a faint default outline.

Deaf and hard of hearing

• A Transcript panel shows everything the assistant says, with adjustable text size. It opens by voice or by button.
• Every sound effect is captioned — the splash, the bite, the reel, the oven bell, the thunder, the shark — shown on screen as it plays and logged to the transcript.
• No information exists only as audio.

Motor differences and switch users

• Every action is available by voice, touch and keyboard.
• The fishing board uses a single tab stop: Tab lands on the boat and the arrow keys steer. It does not take 100 presses to cross the water.
• Nothing requires speed, dragging, or precision. There are no timed reflexes.

Cognitive load and attention

• One goal on screen at a time, with a clue.
• Assistants are limited to one or two short sentences per turn and barred from jargon — no "hazard", "multiplier", "coordinates".
• Both games honour the system "reduce motion" setting and disable all animation.

Nothing can be failed

This matters more than it sounds. Quests cannot be failed and are never timed. An empty hook costs nothing and does not break a bonus streak. The shark takes half a score, never all of it. A child doing the right thing should always see their score going up — a score that falls while they are doing their best reads as "I am bad at this", not "I was unlucky."

6. What we have not solved yet

Screen readers are not tested

Interactive elements carry plain-English labels and state changes are announced, so a screen reader may work — but we have not tested with VoiceOver, NVDA, TalkBack, or any other screen reader, and we do not claim it as supported. The tested route for a player who cannot see the screen is voice control. Browser zoom up to 200% has been tested and is supported.

Speech recognition does not learn your child

We bias recognition toward the game's vocabulary, which meaningfully improves results for developing or unclear speech. We do not build a personal voice model. A child with significant dysarthria or apraxia may still be misheard. Touch and keyboard remain available, and the game never blocks progress on being understood.

Pacing control is coarse

Speech is Normal or Slow. There is no fine speed control, and no in-game volume control separate from the device volume.

No haptic feedback

We do not currently use vibration to confirm actions.

Our test group is small

These games were designed with, and are tested by, two children with low vision. That is genuine testing with disabled users rather than lab testing alone — but it is two children with one profile of disability. We have not tested with children who have significant speech disorders, motor impairments, or hearing loss.

7. Practical notes for parents and carers

• A quiet room helps a lot. Recognition is markedly better without a television running behind the child.
• Let them talk over the assistant. Interruption is supported.
• Teach four commands first: "start fishing", "north", "score", "help". Everything else follows from there.
• "Where am I" is the reset button. If a child is lost or upset, that one phrase re-orients them completely.
• Turn on Slow speech mode if your child processes language more slowly — it is in the accessibility controls beside the transcript.
• Voice is optional. Both games are complete and winnable with touch or keyboard alone.
• No child personal data. The player name is stored on the device only, to greet the child and label their leaderboard score.

8. Our position

Accessibility here is not a compliance exercise bolted on at the end. These games exist because two children with low vision wanted to play games that did not expect them to see well. Every rule in this document was written because something did not work for them first.

We will keep publishing what is not yet accessible alongside what is. A guide that lists only successes is not much use to a parent deciding whether their child can play.