Accessibility

Dark interface

The whole app has a light and a dark appearance, the board included. By default it follows your device. To choose one for Patterns only, tap your avatar, choose Profile, then Theme: System, Light or Dark.

Reduced motion

With Reduce Motion on (iPhone and iPad: Settings → Accessibility → Motion; Android: Settings → Accessibility → Remove animations), Patterns doesn't just switch animations off. Most screens appear with a short fade instead of sliding or zooming, decorative movement stops, and what the motion was telling you — a new screen, a locked lesson — is still shown, without the movement. It takes effect from the next screen, with the app open.

Larger text

Text follows your device's text size (iPhone and iPad: Settings → Accessibility → Display & Text Size → Larger Text; Android: Settings → Display → Font size). Reading text grows to between one and a half and two times its standard size; headings and large numbers grow less, so they stay on one screen without breaking words.

On the board screens of small phones, such as the iPhone SE, the text around the board stays close to its standard size: the board takes the full width of the screen, and there is no room left beside it.

Not by colour alone

Results are written out wherever we show them: a correct or wrong move in words, a rating change as a number with its sign (+12, −8).

Turn on Differentiate Without Color (iPhone and iPad: Settings → Accessibility → Display & Text Size) and the board's highlights get a shape as well as a colour: a frame for the last move, a dashed frame for a hint or a premove, corner brackets for what a move is going after, a ring round a king in check (two for checkmate), a tick on the move that was right. Off the board, the same setting adds a second cue where a colour carried the meaning: ticks on the streak calendar, a tick or a cross on the recent-puzzle dots, a shape for each puzzle in the Storm run strip, dotted arrows for the other side's moves in lessons, and places written out in the Hall of Fame. The shapes come and go immediately, with the app open. A few lesson arrows still tell a check from a checkmate by colour alone.

Android has no such setting, so there the board and those places use colour alone. With Patterns Pro, the board comes in seven themes: pick the one with the contrast that suits you under Profile → Board Theme.

Sufficient contrast

Text is set at a contrast of at least 4.5 : 1 against what it sits on, in both appearances, except text that is switched off (a disabled control). On the board, the coordinate letters and numbers, and the dark pieces of one board theme, are lower by default. With Increase Contrast on (iPhone and iPad: Settings → Accessibility → Display & Text Size), the greys and coloured words go darker on the light appearance and lighter on the dark one, and those board details reach full contrast.

Bold text and transparency

On iPhone and iPad, Bold Text makes the app's text heavier, and Reduce Transparency turns the glass of the tab bar, sheets and pop-overs solid and replaces the app's own blurred backgrounds with a plain one (both under Settings → Accessibility → Display & Text Size). Both take effect immediately, with the app open.

Not yet supported

• VoiceOver and other screen readers. The chessboard can't be read or played with a screen reader yet, so puzzles, lessons and Storm are not usable without sight. We're working on it, and we'd like blind and low-vision players to try it before we call it done — write to us if you'd like to help.
• Voice Control. Board squares can't be named yet, so a move needs the number grid.

Patterns has no videos or spoken audio, so captions and audio descriptions don't apply.

Tell us what you need

If something gets in your way, write to support@patterns.gg. Tell us your device, the setting you use and the screen where it went wrong. A person reads every message, and accessibility reports go to the front of the queue.