Accessibility

How is the Gears app accessible?

Gears is designed to be run without looking. The coach's voice carries the run: it calls each gear, counts you down and tells you when you drift, so a blind or low-vision runner can follow a whole session by ear. Around that, the app works with the accessibility features built into iPhone and Apple Watch.

• VoiceOver: every control and figure has a label, and figures are read in words, such as "Heart rate variability, 47 milliseconds". The run screen announces gear changes.
• Dynamic Type: text grows with your chosen size, and wraps rather than being cut off. The large run numbers on the watch are the exception.
• Reduce Motion: when it's on, Gears honors it and tones down movement on screen.
• Increase Contrast: raises the contrast of text. Text is at least 4.5:1 against its background, and at least 7:1 with Increase Contrast on.
• Color is never alone: each gear has its own color, but the gear's number or name always goes with it, so nothing depends on telling colors apart.
• Haptics on Apple Watch: shifting up and shifting down each have their own tap pattern, with a single tap for a walk and clicks over the last three seconds of a block. On the watch, a run can be followed by touch alone.
• Light and dark: the iPhone app follows your appearance setting.
• Quiet or talkative: choose how often the coach speaks, from Quiet to Talkative, in You → Settings → Coach, and turn its volume up or down there or on the run screen.

How is this website accessible?

• Pages use proper headings, landmarks and lists, so screen readers can move through them easily.
• Everything works with a keyboard, with a clearly visible focus outline.
• Animation plays only if your device hasn't asked for reduced motion.
• Text is designed to meet WCAG contrast levels, and sizes are set so the browser's zoom and text size settings work.
• Images have text alternatives, and decorative ones are hidden from screen readers.
• The site sets no cookies and loads no third-party scripts that could get in the way of assistive technology.

What standard do we aim for?

We aim for this website to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at level AA, and we apply the same principles to the app, alongside Apple's accessibility guidelines. Gears is new: neither the app nor the site has yet been reviewed by an independent accessibility auditor, and we'll say so here when one has.

Where do we still fall short?

We'd rather tell you now than have you find out mid-run:

• The app and the coach are in English only, for now.
• On Apple Watch, the large numbers on the run screen don't grow with Dynamic Type, so that they fit the screen.
• The watch app is always dark; it doesn't offer a light appearance.
• The charts in a run's details are visual first. The key figures, such as time, distance, pace and time in range, are also given as text.
• The coach speaks over your music. If you rely on a screen reader during a run, the two voices can overlap; setting the coach to Quiet keeps it to gear changes, countdowns and safety.
• The tick and breathing sounds play on iPhone only, not yet on the watch.

How do I report a barrier?

If anything in Gears or on this site is hard or impossible for you to use, please tell us at support@gearsrunning.com. Say what you were trying to do, which device and assistive technology you use, and what happened. A person who builds Gears reads every message, and we'll tell you what we're doing about it. If you'd find it easier, we can help you by email with anything the app or site does.