Accessibility

Our commitment

Ether is for everyone — that includes blind and low-vision users, people with motor impairments, people with vestibular sensitivity, and people who rely on assistive technology to use their phone. We design and test the app against WCAG 2.1 Level AA as a baseline and follow Apple's and Google's platform-native accessibility patterns rather than reinventing them.

Accessibility is part of every release we ship, not an afterthought. The team re-audits the app on a quarterly cadence and treats accessibility regressions with the same urgency as security regressions.

What we support today

For blind and low-vision users

• VoiceOver / TalkBack: every interactive element has a meaningful label, role, and where appropriate a hint. State changes (liked, muted, recording, mutual spark) are announced.
• Larger Text / Dynamic Type: text scales with your accessibility text size preference. Layouts reflow rather than truncate.
• Sufficient contrast: all text meets WCAG AA contrast ratios (4.5:1 for body text, 3:1 for large text). Overlays on top of video and images use enforced minimum opacity floors.
• Differentiate without colour: every state that uses colour also uses an icon, shape, or text label, so red/green isn't the only difference between, say, a recording-too-short button and a ready-to-send button.
• Dark mode: full dark theme that's not just inverted colours — separate palette tuned for low-light contrast.

For users with motor impairments

• Voice Control: "Show Names" mode works because every button has a speakable label. You can say "Tap Like" or "Tap Open Chat" and it works.
• Touch targets: primary actions hit the iOS 44×44 minimum. Smaller icon buttons extend their tap area with hitSlop.
• Reduce Motion: when you've enabled Reduce Motion at the OS level, our celebration confetti, pulse loops, calling-screen rings, and recording-screen countdown all snap to the end state instead of animating. No vestibular triggers.

For users with hearing impairments

Ether is fundamentally a video-based product, so this is the area we have the furthest to go. Today, the chat UI is fully usable without sound — every audio cue (haptic, sound effect) is paired with a visual one. Captions for user-recorded video intros are on our roadmap — we're prioritising on-device transcription so the captions are author-vetted before upload, rather than auto-generated by a server you can't see.

Where we have gaps

Honest list. We'd rather tell you up front than over-promise.

• Captions on intros and reactions — not yet shipped. In active development.
• Audio descriptions of intros — we don't currently provide narrated descriptions of the visual content of intros. The screen UI around each intro is fully labelled for VoiceOver.
• Switch Control — not formally tested at the same depth as VoiceOver and Voice Control. Should work because the underlying labels are the same, but we don't yet declare full support.
• Right-to-left languages — Ether currently ships in English. RTL layout work happens alongside localisation.

If something doesn't work

Please tell us. Email accessibility@ether.dating with as much detail as you can — what device, what assistive tech, what you tried to do, what happened. We aim to acknowledge within two business days and prioritise fixes for accessibility regressions ahead of new features.

You can also use the in-app feedback form (Settings → Help & Feedback) — if you mention "accessibility" in the message it gets routed to the same inbox.

Standards we follow

• WCAG 2.1 Level AA — Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, applied to native mobile UI as the closest applicable standard.
• Apple Human Interface Guidelines — Accessibility — Dynamic Type, VoiceOver labels, Reduce Motion, Voice Control.
• Google Material Accessibility — TalkBack labels, touch target sizes, contrast ratios.
• EAA (European Accessibility Act) — we're tracking EAA compliance as it phases in for digital services in the EU.

App Store accessibility labels

Apple's App Store Connect lets us self-declare which accessibility features we support. As of the most recent submission, we declare support for VoiceOver, Larger Text, Dark Interface, Sufficient Contrast, Differentiate Without Color Alone, Voice Control, and Reduced Motion. We don't declare Captions or Audio Descriptions yet — those are in the gap list above.