Accessibility Conformance Report
Hushbird has been evaluated against Revised Section 508 and WCAG 2.1 Level AA. All 49 applicable criteria were assessed. None failed.
Every criterion was tested rather than inferred from the source. Screen reader behaviour was confirmed by listening with VoiceOver, keyboard operation by navigating without a mouse, and colour contrast by measurement. The script that took those measurements reads the colours out of the application's own source, so the figures cannot drift from what the software draws.
That testing found real defects, which were fixed rather than documented around: the screen reader cursor announcing the wrong language, status confirmations that changed on screen and said nothing aloud, and body text at 2.67:1 where 4.5:1 is required.
Read the full report Contrast measurements
Who is evaluating it
We wrote to two state assistive technology programs after publishing this report. Both replied asking for licenses. Neither has been paid anything.
| Program | What they asked for |
|---|---|
| TechOWL, Pennsylvania The state's Assistive Technology Act program, at Temple University |
Licenses for demonstration and short-term lending MacBooks. Their Assistive Technology Professional noted that the dictation and text-to-speech tool they currently recommend runs only on Windows. |
| Colorado Division of Vocational Rehabilitation State vocational rehabilitation |
Licenses for evaluation by their Lead Assistive Technology Specialists, for workplace and job retention accommodations. |
Both were given permanent licenses at no cost, because a seven day trial expires in a borrower's hands. If your program is in the same position, the same offer stands.
How it was evaluated
- Screen reader. VoiceOver on macOS 26, by listening. Custom controls were checked individually, not assumed to behave like the standard ones they are built from.
- Keyboard. Every settings pane crossed without a mouse, with macOS Keyboard navigation enabled, recording focus order and confirming no keyboard trap.
- Contrast. Measured, not judged by eye, with semi-transparent colours composited onto the surface behind them first. The measurements are published in full.
- Source review of every interactive control. Automated tooling was not used: no reliable automated checker exists for AppKit and SwiftUI, and claiming one had been run would be the easiest thing here to say and the hardest to defend.
Three things worth knowing
Three of the 49 criteria are met with a stated exception. Here is what each one means in practice for the person using Hushbird.
| If you need to | What to do |
|---|---|
| Make the text larger | Use Display scaling or Zoom in System Settings. Text scales to 200% and beyond with no loss of content or function. On macOS this is handled by the system for every application at once, so Hushbird has no separate text-size setting to find. |
| Work in a small window | Settings opens at 940 by 620 points and can be moved and resized above that. Every pane scrolls, so nothing is out of reach at any size. That floor exists because the voice grid needs the width. |
| Hear dictated text read back in another language | Hushbird's own reading voices switch language automatically. A screen reader will not: the interface is declared as English, and text you dictate or translate is not tagged with its language, so VoiceOver reads it with English pronunciation. |
The full report states each of these as a formal conformance exception, with the criterion it falls under.
Vendor and procurement
Hushbird is a product of PSYT LLC. Purchase orders, contracts and vendor registrations are in the name of the company.
ZST3XWTXJYE600091426 (Massachusetts)Perpetual department and agency licenses, purchase orders, W-9 and Net 30 terms are set out on the institutions page. There is no reseller and no sales process to go through.
Reporting an accessibility problem
If any part of Hushbird is difficult or impossible for you to use, write to access@hushbird.app. Say what you were trying to do and what happened. You will get a reply from a person, and the fastest fixes so far have all come from somebody describing exactly this.