Accessibility

Everyone should be able to find a recipe and cook from it — using a keyboard, a screen reader, voice control, a magnifier, or a phone held at arm's length with floury hands.

Our target is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at level AA, which is the standard normally used in Australia to meet obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992. We are not claiming we have fully met it. This page says what we have done and what we know still needs work, because a statement that only lists the good parts is not much use to anyone.

• Keyboard use. Interactive elements can be reached with the Tab key and show a visible focus outline, so you can see where you are.
• Reduced motion. If your device is set to reduce motion, the site honours it and animations are cut back or turned off.
• Light and dark themes. You can pick either, or follow your system setting. The theme is applied before the page draws, so there is no flash of the wrong colours.
• Text and zoom. Pages use relative sizing and reflow, so browser zoom and larger text settings work without content being cut off.
• Headings and structure. Pages use real headings and landmarks rather than styled text, which is what screen readers navigate by.
• No interruptions. There are no ads, no pop-ups, no autoplaying video and no newsletter overlays. Cook Mode in particular stays quiet while you cook.
• Nothing important is behind an account. Recipes, search and Cook Mode all work signed out.

Being honest about the gaps:

• No independent audit. The site has not been tested by an accessibility specialist or reviewed by people with disability. Our own testing only finds what we think to look for.
• No skip-to-content link. Keyboard users currently have to tab through the navigation on every page.
• The busier pages need work. The meal planner, Cook Mode and the quizzes have complex controls and drag-style interactions that have not been fully tested with a screen reader.
• Image descriptions vary. Decorative artwork is fine to skip, but not every recipe image yet has a description that adds something for someone who cannot see it.
• Colour contrast is not fully verified. The palette is warm and low-contrast in places, and we have not checked every text and background combination against the AA threshold.
• Timers are visual. Cook Mode timers rely on seeing the screen, which is no good if you have stepped away or cannot see it.
• Community photos have no captions unless the person who uploaded them wrote one.

These are on the list rather than accepted. If one of them is blocking you, say so and it moves up the list.

Email hello@iwantsomefood.com with “Accessibility” in the subject line. Tell us the page, what you were trying to do, and what got in the way. If you can, say what you browse with — screen reader and version, keyboard only, magnification, phone or desktop. It makes the difference between us guessing and us fixing.

We aim to reply within five business days with either a fix, a workaround, or an honest estimate. If the site cannot give you what you need, we will send you the content another way — for example, the full text of a recipe in an email — while we work on the underlying problem. Just ask.

If you are not satisfied with how we responded, you can complain to the Australian Human Rights Commission, which handles disability discrimination complaints about websites. We would much rather hear from you first and fix it, but you do not need our permission to go there.

For anything else, start at contact.