Ember
Built to be usable by everyone
Last reviewed: September 7, 2026
Hunters come to Ember with every kind of body, eyesight, and hearing — and they use it in the hardest conditions an app can face: gloves, pre-dawn dark, cold hands, and no signal. We want every one of them to be able to read the land, check in with their group, and get home safe.
This page is the honest version of where we are. It says what works today, what doesn’t yet, and how to tell us when you hit a wall.
WCAG 2.2 AA is the target
We measure the app and this site against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 at level AA, alongside Apple’s and Google’s platform accessibility guidance. We do not claim full conformance yet.
Fixed in the open
Accessibility fixes ship in regular releases and get called out in the changelog like any other feature. This page is revised when the facts on it change.
Your report sets priority
A barrier reported by a real hunter jumps the queue. Tell us what you were trying to do and what got in the way, and we’ll tell you what we’re doing about it.
What Ember does today
The practical measures already in the app on iOS and Android — most of them shaped by the field, where accessibility and usability turn out to be the same problem.
Motion you can turn down
When your phone’s “Reduce Motion” setting is on, Ember drops its animations — the login backdrop, loading sequences, score reveals, and map toolbar effects settle instead of moving. This website honors the same preference.
Feedback you can feel
Key actions confirm with a distinct haptic pulse — taps, selections, the countdown when you hold the SOS button. A tactile channel works with gloves on, in the dark, and without looking at the screen.
Status that announces itself
Live regions on the map, boundary warnings, placement advice, and the measure tool announce changes to a screen reader without stealing focus, so VoiceOver and TalkBack users hear what changed while they keep working.
Works without a signal
Map tiles cache to your device and actions you take offline queue up and sync when you’re back in range. Losing service on the walk in shouldn’t mean losing the app.
Never color alone
Stand scores carry a number and a word — “Excellent,” “Good,” “Fair” — not just a color tier. If you don’t see amber and green the way the design intends, the read is still there in text.
Room to tap
Buttons and controls on the map, the safety sheet, and pickers are sized to at least 44 pixels so they are hittable with cold fingers or a glove — the platform minimum, applied where it matters most.
This website
emberhq.app is built to be read by anyone, on any device, with or without a mouse.
- Keyboard-navigable. Every link, button, form field, and interactive demo can be reached with Tab and operated with Enter or Space, with a visible focus ring so you always know where you are.
- Labeled and described. Icon-only controls, store badges, tab groups, and illustrative graphics carry text labels or descriptions for screen readers. Decorative images are hidden from them.
- Readable contrast. Body text on the paper background and the darker ember shade used for small orange text are chosen to meet the AA contrast ratio.
- Real text, real zoom. Headings and copy are HTML text, not images, and the page reflows at up to 200% browser zoom without horizontal scrolling.
- Motion respects your settings. The scrolling reveals, the terrain-read animation, and the video sections all fall back to a static state when “Reduce Motion” is on.
The first Tab press on any page reveals a “Skip to content” link that jumps past the navigation and moves focus into the page body.
Where we still fall short
These are the barriers we know about in the app. Each one is real, and each one is on the roadmap. We’d rather you read it here than discover it in a stand.
Text does not yet scale with your system font size
Ember’s type is set at fixed sizes, so iOS Dynamic Type and Android font-size settings are not honored inside the app, and pinch-to-zoom is disabled on app screens.
In the meantime Your device’s system-wide Zoom (iOS: Settings → Accessibility → Zoom; Android: Settings → Accessibility → Magnification) magnifies Ember like any other app and is the reliable path today.
One theme, and it is dark
The app ships a single dark interface built for low light in the field. There is no light theme, no high-contrast mode, and no response to “Increase Contrast” or forced-colors settings yet.
In the meantime The Smart Invert and color-filter options in your device’s accessibility settings apply on top of Ember, though we haven’t tuned the app for them.
Screen reader coverage is uneven
Newer surfaces — the map search, boundary and placement advice, the SOS flow — are labeled and announce their state. Older screens have icon-only buttons that a screen reader will read as unlabeled, and some labels are English-only.
Keyboard and switch navigation is limited
Focus indicators exist on the map controls, search, and safety sheet, but the app was designed for touch. Full keyboard traversal, focus trapping in dialogs, and switch-control tuning are not done.
Using Ember with assistive technology
Ember is a native app on iOS and Android, so the accessibility features built into your phone apply to it. A few that matter most in the field:
- Screen readers. VoiceOver (iOS) and TalkBack (Android) work with Ember. Expect the map, search, boundary alerts, and the SOS flow to be well labeled; expect some older screens to have unlabeled icons. If a control reads as “button” with no name, that is a bug — please report it.
- Magnification. Because the app does not yet scale its own text, use system Zoom or Magnification to enlarge the whole screen. The system zoom gestures work on top of Ember.
- Reduce Motion. iOS: Settings → Accessibility → Motion → Reduce Motion. Android: Settings → Accessibility → Remove animations. Ember reads this setting on every screen that animates.
- Haptics. Tactile feedback requires vibration to be enabled on your device. It is not tied to Reduce Motion, on purpose — a pulse in your pocket is often the most accessible signal in the woods.
- Safety alerts. An SOS reaches your group by push notification, text message, or a phone call, so a hunter who cannot hear an alert tone still gets it on a lock screen or a watch.
How we measure it
We build against WCAG 2.2 at level AA, the Apple Human Interface Guidelines for accessibility, and Android accessibility guidance. Today that testing is manual: screen readers on real devices, Reduce Motion on, and gloves on. Automated accessibility checks are not yet part of our release pipeline, and this statement has not been reviewed by a third-party auditor.
When something on this page stops being true — in either direction — we update the page and the “last reviewed” date at the top.
Tell us about a barrier
If any part of Ember or this website is hard or impossible for you to use, we want to know. Tell us what you were trying to do, the device and assistive technology you were using, and what happened. We read every report, we reply, and we’ll tell you where the fix lands. If you need help with a feature right now, we’ll walk you through it another way in the meantime.