Accessibility
statement.

What we are aiming at

Sideline Call aims to meet WCAG 2.2 level AA across the website, the game and the iOS and Android apps.

We are not a public body, so the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018 do not apply to us. We publish this statement anyway, because the obligation not to discriminate under the Equality Act 2010 — and its equivalent in Ireland, the Equal Status Acts — does apply, and because a statement nobody made us write is the only kind worth reading.

How close it actually gets

“Partially conformant” is the honest answer rather than the flattering one. We would rather list what is broken than claim a level nobody has checked.

What is in place

Colour and contrast

Every colour in the game is written down in one place, once for light and once for dark. The contrast of every pair that carries text is worked out from those definitions on every run of the tests, in light and in dark, and a failure stops the build rather than printing a warning. Body text measures 14.84:1 in light and 15.24:1 in dark against its background; secondary text 5.13:1 and 6.75:1. The bright accent green is never used to carry text — it is a fill, with dark text on top of it, and every accent-filled control also carries a solid border so it does not depend on colour alone to be seen as a control.

Dark mode

Light, dark or follow-the-device, chosen in the footer of any page or in Settings, and resolved before the page paints so that opening the site at night does not flash a bright screen at you. The dark ground is a deep pitch green rather than black, which is easier on the eyes at length.

Motion

Every animation and transition is switched off when your system asks for reduced motion, including smooth scrolling. On iOS, every animation goes through a single helper that reads the Reduce Motion setting, and an automated check fails if any animation is written that bypasses it.

Keyboard and pointer

A visible focus outline on every focusable thing, in a colour that clears contrast in light and in dark. A skip link on these pages and in the game. Controls in the game are checked automatically against a 44×44 pixel target — well above the 24 pixel minimum WCAG 2.2 asks for at AA — and the check lists any control that has slipped under it.

Structure and screen readers

A main landmark and a heading on every screen, both verified automatically. Changes that happen without moving focus — a saved prediction, a score arriving — are announced through a live region. County crests are marked decorative, because the county name is always there in text beside them; a crest is never the only way to know which team you are looking at.

Text size

Text is set in relative units and reflows when you zoom to 200% or enlarge text in your browser. On iOS every font is anchored to a Dynamic Type style, so the app follows the reader's text size setting including Accessibility Larger Text — again, checked automatically, because this is exactly the kind of thing a refactor drops silently.

On the phone apps

Thirteen native accessibility features are held in place by an automated check: Reduce Motion, Differentiate Without Colour, Increase Contrast, Bold Text, Smart Invert, VoiceOver announcements, the VoiceOver rotor, custom actions, Voice Control input labels, scaled metrics, haptics, character-by-character speech for codes, and keyboard shortcuts. A GAA score has its own spoken form so that 1–15 is read as “one goal, fifteen points” rather than “one dash fifteen”, because goals and points are different units and reading them as a range is wrong.

Known problems

These are the things we know about. They are on the list to fix.

• The front page has no skip link. It has a main landmark, so a screen reader can jump to the content, but a keyboard user has to tab through the masthead. These four written pages and the game itself do have one. Target: next release.
• Nobody independent has audited this. Every claim above comes from our own automated checks and our own testing. Automated checking catches perhaps a third of what is actually wrong, and it has never once been confused by a layout. Target: [date].
• No formal testing with assistive technology users. The app has been driven with VoiceOver and with a keyboard by the people who built it, which is not the same thing as watching somebody who depends on it try to save a prediction before throw-in. Target: [date].
• The stand-in fixture data is confusing. Sample fixtures and results are labelled as such in the footer, but not everywhere they appear. That is harder on somebody using a screen reader than on a sighted reader, who can take in the whole card at once.
• The county map on the admin desk is not accessible. It is an internal tool, not part of the game, and no player ever reaches it — but it is a gap and we are not going to leave it off the list.

If you have hit something that is not on this list, it is not that we decided it was acceptable. We do not know about it yet. Please tell us.

How this was tested

Every claim on this page is checked automatically, on every run of the test suite, and the suite fails rather than warns:

• every contrast ratio is recalculated from the colour definitions themselves, in both light and dark, on all pages — so a colour cannot be changed without the ratio being worked out again;
• every visible control in the game is measured against a 44 pixel target in a real browser;
• the main landmark, the skip link and the heading on each screen are asserted;
• the live region that announces silent changes is asserted;
• the thirteen iOS affordances, and the Dynamic Type anchoring of every font, are asserted against the source;
• an animation written without the Reduce Motion helper fails the suite.

Manual testing so far: VoiceOver on iOS and macOS, keyboard-only navigation, browser zoom to 200% and 400%, and both light and dark. Tested in current Safari, Chrome and Firefox.

This statement was prepared on 15 August 2026 on the basis of that testing, and is reviewed when the game changes materially or every twelve months, whichever comes first.

Tell us about a barrier

If something on this site or in the app stopped you doing what you came to do, write to support@sidelinecall.com with “Accessibility” in the subject line.

What helps most: the page or screen, what you were trying to do, what happened instead, and what you were using — browser, phone, and any assistive technology such as VoiceOver, TalkBack, a screen magnifier or voice control. If that is more than you want to write, send us a sentence; we will ask if we need more.

We aim to reply within five working days. If the fix is quick you will usually get it faster than that. If it is not, we will tell you what we are doing and roughly when.

If you need something from the game in a different format and cannot get at it, ask — we will find a way to get it to you.

If we do not put it right

If you have told us about a barrier and are not happy with the response, you can take it further. In the United Kingdom, the Equality Advisory and Support Service (equalityadvisoryservice.com) advises on rights under the Equality Act 2010. In Ireland, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (ihrec.ie) does the same under the Equal Status Acts.

We would much rather hear from you directly first, and fix it.