Accessibility at Celestial Dial
Celestial Dial is a daily horoscope delivered by text message. We want the whole experience, from this website to signing up to reading your morning text, to work for everyone, including people who use screen readers, keyboard navigation, screen magnification, or reduced-motion settings.
Our goal
We aim to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, Level AA. WCAG 2.2 AA includes the WCAG 2.0 AA requirements that Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act refers to, so meeting it also covers those. We are not claiming full conformance today. This page says exactly what we have tested and what is still open.
What we built in
- Every page starts with a "Skip to content" link, uses one main heading, headings in order, and labeled page regions.
- Everything works with a keyboard, in a logical order, with a visible focus outline. The sign dial on our home page is a radio group: use the arrow keys to turn it.
- When you pick a sign, the sample text is announced politely to screen readers.
- Moving decoration (twinkling stars and the slow drift of the night sky) can be stopped with the Pause animation button at the top of every page. Your choice is remembered on this device.
- If your device asks for reduced motion, we turn off parallax and animation entirely, and the sample text shows as already delivered.
- Decorative images are hidden from screen readers. The one image that carries information, today's moon, has a text description of its phase.
- Text keeps at least WCAG AA contrast against the sky at every scroll position, and the page reflows at 320 pixels wide and at 200% zoom.
- The page still reads completely, in order, with JavaScript turned off. All twelve sample texts are in a plain list.
- Our texts themselves are plain text with no emoji or special characters.
How we tested
- Automated checks with axe-core in Chrome, through Playwright, on every page and interactive state (each sign selected, questions open, animation paused and playing, reduced motion), at phone and desktop widths. The current result is zero violations.
- Lighthouse accessibility audits.
- A scripted keyboard walk through the home page and the signup pages, plus checks at 320 pixels wide, at 200% zoom, with reduced motion, and with the pause control.
- The signup, help, legal, opt-in and find-your-sign pages were audited with the same automated checks.
Known limitations
- Screen readers: we have not yet completed a full pass with VoiceOver (macOS and iOS) or NVDA (Windows). Some parts may announce awkwardly until that is done.
- Payment: checkout is hosted by Stripe. We do not control its accessibility. If it gives you trouble, email us and we will help you finish signing up.
- Text messages: how your reading appears depends on your phone and carrier.
- Automated tools catch only some problems. We expect to find more, and we fix them as we do.
Tell us about a barrier
If something on Celestial Dial does not work for you, please tell us. It helps us fix it.
- Email: [email protected] (put "Accessibility" in the subject).
- We aim to reply within 5 business days.
- If you cannot use the signup form, email us and we will help you sign up by email instead.
- Mail: Celestial Dial LLC, 30 N Gould St, Ste N, Sheridan, WY 82801.