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Accessibility audit

This is the project's accessibility review of the DevNav TUI and its documentation, performed against common accessibility best practices (WCAG 2.1 principles applied to a terminal user interface where reasonable). It records what was verified, what is strong, and the residual limitations.

TUI (the dev navigator)

Keyboard operation — PASS

  • DevNav is fully keyboard-driven: every function, mode, and dialog is reachable and completable from the keyboard only (see the shortcut tables in README.md). No operation requires a mouse, and no function is mouse-only.
  • No time-limited input or auto-dismissing dialog exists; modal panels (help, command manager, delete confirmation) stay until explicitly closed.
  • Focus is always visible: the highlighted row uses a distinct background/foreground pair plus a > marker, so the selection is identifiable without relying on color alone.

Color and contrast — PASS with notes

Audited foreground colors (defined in src/render.rs) against a dark terminal background:

Element Color (RGB) Contrast vs black WCAG AA (4.5:1)
Normal text / selected row text SELECTED_FG (232,238,252) 18.1:1 PASS
Titles / accents CYAN (116,199,236) 11.1:1 PASS
Shortcut highlights SHORTCUT (255,203,107) 14.0:1 PASS
Selected-row background pairing SELECTED_FG on SELECTED_BG (32,43,65) 12.2:1 PASS
Frame/border glyphs FRAME (90,100,120) 3.5:1 Decorative (non-text), exempt

All text elements meet WCAG AA contrast on dark terminal backgrounds. The frame color is decorative (borders only) and carries no information by itself.

Residual limitations (documented, not claimed as met)

  • Light terminal themes: on white/light terminal backgrounds the light foreground palette does not meet AA contrast. DevNav inherits the terminal's default background rather than forcing one. Recommendation for affected users: use a dark terminal theme (e.g., Windows Terminal's dark profiles). Changing the application to force its own background would alter rendering for every user and is tracked as a possible future option, not adopted in this audit.
  • Screen readers: the TUI draws a raw console screen buffer with ANSI escape sequences and differential updates; it does not expose a UIA/Accessibility tree. Screen-reader users cannot meaningfully operate the interactive TUI today. The non-interactive paths (dev --version, config commands such as dev language / dev shortcut) work normally with assistive technology because they are plain console I/O.

Project sites and documentation — PASS

  • Documentation (README, TROUBLESHOOTING, CONTRIBUTING, this file) is plain Markdown: text-first, screen-reader friendly, with semantic heading structure and descriptive link text.
  • All user-facing content is available in two languages (English and Spanish).
  • No documentation feature relies on color-only information or on time-limited interaction.

Conclusion

DevNav follows accessibility best practices where it is reasonable for a terminal application: complete keyboard operability, no time constraints, visible focus, AA-contrast text on dark backgrounds, and accessible documentation. The two residual limitations above are real and recorded rather than claimed as solved.