path: root/Docs/ACCESSIBILITY.md

# Accessibility Audit

`DomainDigUITests` runs Apple's `performAccessibilityAudit()` across every
primary screen. The audit checks contrast, hit-region size, clipped text at
large Dynamic Type, element descriptions, trait correctness, and Dynamic Type
support — the same ground the accessibility pass tracked in
[issue #21](https://github.com/krazywarez/domain-dig/issues/21) covers.

## The colour palette

Semantic colours live in `Shared/Colors.xcassets`, which is inside the `Shared`
file-system-synchronized group and therefore reaches the app, the widget, and
the share extension automatically. `AccentColor` stays in
`DomainDig/Assets.xcassets` because it is the system-wide tint resolved via
`ASSETCATALOG_COMPILER_GLOBAL_ACCENT_COLOR_NAME`.

Use the generated asset symbols — `Color(.statusCritical)`, `Color(.appSurface)`
— never a literal. `ASSETCATALOG_COMPILER_GENERATE_SWIFT_ASSET_SYMBOL_EXTENSIONS`
is on, so these are compile-time checked; a typo will not build.

Every value clears WCAG AA (4.5:1) as text on its page, on its card, **and on
its own 16% badge tint** — the way `AppStatusBadgeView` actually draws it. The
worst of those three is shown:

| Role | Light | Dark | Worst light | Worst dark |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `StatusInfo` / `AccentColor` | `#0000FF` | `#4DA3FF` | 6.76 | 6.47 |
| `StatusPositive` | `#008035` | `#30D158` | 4.54 | 7.62 |
| `StatusWarning` | `#AD5100` | `#FF9F0A` | 4.59 | 7.76 |
| `StatusCritical` | `#CC0700` | `#FF6961` | 4.68 | 6.12 |
| `StatusNeutral` | `#5A5A5F` | `#A1A1A6` | 5.84 | 6.76 |

Each status foreground has a matching `…Surface` colour for the fill behind it,
paired through `AppStatusTone`.

### Contrast alone is not a palette

The first version of this palette maximised contrast and produced mud. Requiring
every foreground to clear 4.5:1 against *its own 16% tint* — the harshest
surface it ever sits on — pushed each colour ~20% darker than the common case
needed. `#7A5600` is not amber, it is olive; `#146C2E` is not green so much as
bottle-dark. Contrast passed and the UI was still hard to read, because hue
identity is what tells "warning" from "critical" at a glance.

Two fixes:

1. **Decouple the fill from the foreground.** `AppStatusTone` carries a
   `foreground` and a `surface` that are authored independently, so the
   foreground no longer has to survive a wash of itself. Every status foreground
   is now fully saturated (`S = 1.0`).
2. **Warning is orange, not yellow.** Yellow cannot stay yellow at a lightness
   low enough to clear 4.5:1 on white — it *becomes* olive. That is
   colorimetric, not a tuning problem. Orange holds its identity when darkened,
   so warning is `#AD5100` in light and `#FF9F0A` in dark.

When adding a colour, search for the most saturated value that passes, not the
darkest. The darkest is always easy and always wrong.
| `AppTextSecondary` | `#5A5A5F` | `#A1A1A6` | 6.15 | 7.50 |

`AppTextSecondary` replaces `.secondary` for body text. iOS's own `secondaryLabel`
is only **3.29:1** on a light card — below AA — which never showed while the app
was locked to dark, where the same colour reads 6.32:1. Unlocking light mode
exposed it across 191 sites.

High Contrast variants push further in the same direction. Surfaces
(`AppBackground`, `AppSurface`, `AppSurfaceElevated`, `AppSeparator`) carry no
meaning, so they get Any/Dark and, where useful, High Contrast — but no status
semantics.

Why custom values instead of the system palette: **every** system colour fails
in light mode. Measured on white — systemYellow 1.51:1, systemOrange 2.20:1,
systemGreen 2.22:1, systemCyan 2.54:1, systemRed 3.55:1. All of them pass in
dark mode, which is why the dark-locked app looked fine and why unlocking light
mode is impossible without this work.

### The accent has two roles, and they conflict

An accent used as **text on a dark background** must be light. The same accent
used as a **fill behind a white label** must be dark. One value cannot do both:
`#4DA3FF` reads at 8.00:1 as text on black, but only 2.63:1 behind white text.

So there are two colours:

- `StatusInfo` / `AccentColor` — the accent as *foreground*: text, icons,
  bordered-button labels, tab bar.
- `AccentFill` — the accent as a *filled background* behind a label, used by
  `.borderedProminent`. Stays dark in both schemes so a white label clears AA
  (8.59:1 light, 7.56:1 dark).

`AppOnAccent` is the label colour for a solid accent fill and flips by scheme —
white on the light accent, black on the dark one.

## Appearance

`AppAppearance` (System / Light / Dark) is stored in `@AppStorage` and applied in
**exactly one place** — the `WindowGroup` in `DomainDigApp`. Keep it that way. The
app previously carried 16 separate `.preferredColorScheme(.dark)` calls scattered
through view bodies, which is how light mode became unreachable without anyone
noticing; re-applying per view is what let the lock spread.

Users override it under Settings → Display.

### Known light-mode findings

| Finding | Cause | Action |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 2× `contrast failed` on Settings | The last rows of a section sit under the translucent tab bar, so the audit measures text against a blended background. Present in dark mode too, since phase 0. | None — standard iOS scroll-under behaviour |
| 3× `contrast nearly passed` on Settings | iOS-rendered `Section` headers (`TIER`, `PREFERENCES`, `SERVICES`) use the system's grey. | Not fixed. Overriding system header styling across every section to gain ~0.3:1 on decorative labels trades platform convention for very little |

Dark mode reports 18 findings and light mode 21; the three extra are the section
headers above. Everything the app actually controls passes in both schemes.

## Enforcement — the ratchet is engaged

With phases 1–5 landed, `AccessibilityAuditHarness.enforcedAuditTypes` enforces
**`.textClipped`, `.dynamicType`, `.hitRegion`, `.elementDetection`,
`.sufficientElementDescription`, `.trait`** on the empty-state test suite. A
named finding in any of these fails CI — regressions in five phases of work are
now gated, not merely reported.

Three deliberate carve-outs, each with its evidence:

1. **`.contrast` stays report-only.** The two long-standing Settings findings
   are rows scrolled under the translucent tab bar; their attribution flips
   between a row name and nil run-to-run, so no suppression is narrow enough to
   keep CI stable. The centralised palette in `Shared/Colors.xcassets` is the
   actual guard against contrast regressions.
2. **The seeded tests run `reportOnly`.** Bisecting the row/badge accessibility
   modifiers showed the audit degrades on `children: .ignore` content — the
   *correct* VoiceOver treatment for dense rows — emitting unattributed
   contrast/dynamicType failures on rows that measure 6–7:1 and render
   correctly. Their burndown still prints; it just doesn't gate.
3. **Characterised noise is suppressed narrowly and always logged** with a
   `[noise: reason]` marker — disabled controls (WCAG 1.4.3 exempt), "nearly
   passed" near-misses, system field placeholders (clipped at any length —
   proven by shortening them to no effect), and unattributed
   clipped/dynamic-type artifacts. Nothing disappears silently; see
   `noiseReason(for:)` for each rule's provenance.

Enforcement is a committed constant rather than a CI setting, for two reasons.
Environment variables do not work: neither a plain `xcodebuild` env var nor a
`TEST_RUNNER_`-prefixed build setting reaches the UI test process, so the toggle
silently did nothing. And a committed value makes "when did clipping become
enforced?" answerable with `git blame` instead of CI tribal knowledge.

## Why coverage is split between local and CI

**Audit coverage is not nested across OS versions.** Each runtime reports
findings the others miss, in *both* directions. Measured on this project:

| Screen | iOS 18.6 | iOS 27.0 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Tracked Domains | 2 (text clipped) | **6** (+ contrast ×3, element detection) |
| Settings | 2 contrast | **`dynamicType`** finding 18.6 missed |
| Dashboard @ `AccessibilityXXXL` | **hit region** + 2 clipped | 1 clipped only |

Neither runtime is a superset, so the oldest supported OS needs its own run.
This also rules out committing per-screen baseline counts as a regression guard:
no single number is correct on both.

The catch is that **GitHub's `macos-26` image ships only iOS 26.x simulator
runtimes.** It cannot test the 17.6 floor at all. A two-job CI matrix was tried
and produced two near-identical 26.x runs at double the macOS minutes.

So the work is split by what each side can uniquely do:

| | Runtime | Uniquely provides |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **CI** (`.github/workflows/build.yml`) | newest available | A clean checkout of the merge result — catches a file that was never committed, which a local run cannot. Matters here because `DomainDig.xcodeproj` is hand-edited and uses file-system-synchronized groups, where a whole missing folder still builds locally. |
| **Local** (`Scripts/audit-a11y.sh`) | oldest supported + newest | Real floor coverage, on a machine that actually has an 18.x runtime installed. |

Together they cover both ends; neither duplicates the other.

## Running it

```sh
./Scripts/audit-a11y.sh            # floor + current
./Scripts/audit-a11y.sh floor      # oldest supported only (~85s)
./Scripts/audit-a11y.sh current    # newest installed only
```

The script reads the deployment target from the project rather than hard-coding
it, and selects the oldest installed runtime **at or above** it — a runtime
below the deployment target is useless, because the app cannot install there.
If the nearest installed runtime is a major version above the target, it says
so rather than implying floor coverage it does not have.

### Pre-push hook

```sh
git config core.hooksPath .githooks
```

Runs the floor audit before a push, and only when Swift, asset, or project files
changed. Bypass with `git push --no-verify`.

Pre-push rather than pre-commit deliberately: the suite takes ~85s, and at
pre-commit that blocks every commit. A hook routinely bypassed with
`--no-verify` is worse than no hook, because it trains you to ignore it.

## Layout gotchas found the hard way

- **`Label` clips its own title.** Every empty-state heading reported as clipped
  text. `.fixedSize` applied to the `Label` does not reach the `Text` inside it,
  so the fix is to split it into an `HStack { Image; Text }` and put the modifier
  on the `Text`. Changing the font design did **not** help — that hypothesis was
  tested and discarded.
- **Splitting a `Label` exposes its icon to VoiceOver.** `Label` folds the image
  into the title's accessibility element; an `HStack` does not, so the icon
  starts announcing its raw SF Symbol name ("checklist.unchecked"). Decorative
  icons split out of a `Label` need `.accessibilityHidden(true)`.
- **Placeholder text is always reported as clipped.** Search prompts and
  `TextField` placeholders are flagged regardless of length — shortening
  "Search portfolio" to "Search" changed nothing. Treat `textClipped` findings on
  a `searchField` or `textField` element as noise rather than shortening useful
  prompts to chase them.
- **`AppLayout.minimumTapTarget` is the floor for every control.** `@ScaledMetric`
  scales *down* below the default text size as well as up, so a scaled dimension
  needs `max(scaled, AppLayout.minimumTapTarget)` or it drops under 44pt for
  users who prefer smaller text.

## VoiceOver conventions

- **Dense rows use combine-for-summary, custom-content-for-detail.**
  `BatchResultRowView` and `WatchlistRowView` each hold 8–9 text elements.
  Reading them inline makes a long sweep unnavigable, so each row is one element:
  `.accessibilityElement(children: .ignore)` + domain label + status value, with
  the rest on `.accessibilityCustomContent(...)`. `.high` importance is spoken
  inline; everything else reaches the More Content rotor on a vertical swipe.
  Rows with only 3–4 elements (the portfolio activity/attention/expiry rows) are
  left to `NavigationLink`'s automatic combine — custom content is for the dense
  case, per WWDC21-10121.
- **The custom-content chain must live in a `ViewModifier`.** Inlined onto a row
  body, six `.accessibilityCustomContent` calls plus the visual layout blow the
  Swift type-checker's budget ("unable to type-check in reasonable time").
  `BatchRowAccessibility` / `WatchlistRowAccessibility` exist for that reason.
- **Splitting a `Label` exposes its icon; combining a header swallows its
  trailing controls.** Two opposite traps. A decorative icon pulled out of a
  `Label` needs `.accessibilityHidden(true)`. A header built as a `Button` must
  *not* get `.accessibilityElement(children: .combine)` if its label contains
  other controls (`CollapsibleSectionView`'s `trailing()` holds Track/Pin) —
  combine would merge them into the header and make them unreachable.
- **Label-in-name (WCAG 2.5.3).** Every `accessibilityLabel` added to a control
  with visible text keeps that text, so Voice Control still works. Free-form
  labels are used only where the control is genuinely icon-only.
- **Technical strings** get `speechStyle: .technical` on `InfoRowViewData`, which
  applies `.speechAlwaysIncludesPunctuation()` and
  `.accessibilityTextContentType(.sourceCode)`. Set today on DNS record values
  and cipher suites; extend it wherever the view model emits a fingerprint,
  serial, or record string.

## Color independence, motion, transparency

- **Status is never colour-only.** In-app badges already pair a symbol with the
  colour. The widget status dot is now an SF Symbol
  (`checkmark.circle.fill` / `exclamationmark.triangle.fill` /
  `exclamationmark.octagon.fill`) — the same vocabulary as the badges, so a
  status reads consistently across surfaces and survives greyscale.
- **`accessibilityDifferentiateWithoutColor`** adds redundant shape only when the
  user asks for it, avoiding clutter otherwise: the Dashboard summary-card dot
  becomes a per-filter symbol, the selected quick-filter chip gains a checkmark
  and border (selection was fill-colour only), and `LabeledValueRow` prefixes a
  warning/failure symbol.
- **`accessibilityReduceMotion`** guards all five animation sites via
  `withAnimation(reduceMotion ? nil : …)` / `.animation(reduceMotion ? nil : …)`:
  `AppCopyButton`'s check cross-fade, `CollapsibleSectionView`'s expand/collapse,
  `TimelineDiffView`'s scroll, and `WatchlistView`'s list reorder.
- **`accessibilityReduceTransparency`** swaps the single `.thinMaterial` for an
  opaque `AppSurfaceElevated` capsule.

These cannot be verified by `simctl`, which toggles only Increase Contrast — the
other three settings live in the simulator's Settings app. They are correct by
construction and build-clean; their runtime behaviour is part of the Phase 6
manual pass. `SweepActivityController` was dropped from the motion list: it is
pure ActivityKit lifecycle with no animation to guard.

### What the automated audit cannot check

`performAccessibilityAudit()` validates descriptions, traits, contrast, hit
regions, and clipping. It does **not** exercise VoiceOver speech, the More
Content rotor, custom-content ordering, or announcements. Those are verified by
construction and a manual VoiceOver pass (Phase 6), not by the suite. A green
audit is necessary, not sufficient, for the row and speech work.

Additionally, the dense rows (`BatchResultRowView`, `WatchlistRowView`) and the
widget never render in the audit — the test simulator has no tracked domains or
batch results. Their treatment is unverified by the suite for the same reason the
Phase 3 `ViewThatFits` work was deferred: absence of findings is absence of data.

## Notes

- **Disabled controls are a false positive, and are suppressed.** WCAG 1.4.3
  exempts inactive components from contrast requirements, but the audit flags
  them anyway — Inspect's Run button is disabled until a domain is typed, and
  auditing the empty state reported a contrast failure that was never a real
  defect. The harness now drops contrast findings whose element reports
  `isEnabled == false`. Suppressing on the rule beats driving the UI to enable
  the control: typing raises the keyboard, which then follows the audit onto
  later screens and flags the system emoji picker's category buttons.
- **A dirty simulator inflates the burndown.** Keyboard state persists across
  runs, so a simulator left with the emoji picker open reports ~9 phantom
  hit-region findings per screen. If findings appear that name system UI
  ("Flags category", "Frequently Used category"), erase the simulator
  (`xcrun simctl erase <udid>`) and re-run before believing them.
- Audits retry up to three times. Slower machines can miss the audit's internal
  deadline (`Audit failed to complete in time`, code `-56`), which is a tooling
  timeout, not an app defect. A screen that still cannot be audited is reported
  as an `XCTSkip`, never a pass — skips are visually distinct in CI, so an
  unaudited screen stays visible instead of being silently counted as clean.
- The suite launches with `DOMAIN_DIG_FORCE_PRO_PLUS` so Pro-gated screens are
  reachable. `PurchaseService` honours that argument in `DEBUG` builds only.
- Everything used is available at the iOS 17.6 deployment floor;
  `performAccessibilityAudit` is `ios(17.0)`.