Due changes in the Americans with Disabilities Act, my university is requiring that all of our digital resources be updated to make sure they’re ADA compliant and accessible to all. This includes websites that we link to and social media that we use. I have several classes that I have used iNaturalist with (General Botany, Dendrology, Gardening for Wildlife), either as a source of reference materials or a place to have my students post observations, but am starting to suspect that I will have to stop. I couldn’t find any recent forum posts on this and so wanted to know how iNaturalist’s work on improving digital accessibility was going, how other educators and institutions may be dealing with this, and how the site has improved (or hasn’t) for people who use tools like screenreaders.
Are you referring to the 2024 DOJ regulation updates (which technically aren’t changes to the ADA itself)? That’s the only recent change that I can imagine would be relevant. My understanding of those regulations are that they require public universities to make their web content and mobile apps compliant with WCAG 2.1 Level AA. They also require websites to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA “if there is a contractual, licensing, or other arrangement through which the public entity uses the web content or mobile app to provide a service, program, or activity.” Unless your university has some kind of arrangement or contract with iNaturalist, I don’t think those regulations would apply. You can refer to https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/28/appendix-D_to_part_35 for the actual text of the regulations. Of course, it could be argued that any websites required for a university course or program should meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA in order to comply with the spirit of the regulation regardless of the actual wording. Regardless, I would love to find out if anyone has actually evaluated iNaturalist for compliance or knows anything about efforts to make iNaturalist accessible.
Thanks for the detailed reply! Yes, those are the changes I’m referring to. While my university doesn’t have a contract or license agreement with iNat, I do sometimes use it in a class to provide a service or activity, so hmmm… I suspect my school is interpreting the regulation updates a bit more stringently than perhaps they have to so that we’re less likely to get sued over accessibility issues, though of course no one has said that officially. Accessibility is important and iNaturalist is such a potentially fun and useful resource for students that I really hope they’re taking serious steps to improve, but the older threads I’ve seen about this have just said the site is difficult to use and that improvement is on their to-do list.
I agree, this is an important issue.
The W3C(1) WAI(2) maintains a list of accessibility tools on their web site:
https://www.w3.org/WAI/test-evaluate/tools/list/
Many of these are public and browser-based: Just pop in a URL and get a report. I haven’t used any of them in many years, so I don’t have more specific recommendations.
- W3C: World Wide Web Consortium
- WAI: Web Accessibility Initiative
I want to note that accessibility varies between the main website, the Classic apps (iOS and Android), iNat Next, and the localized versions of the iNat website, eg ArgentiNat in Argentina.
Some things are easier to change than others; I’ve asked for eg blocks of grey text to be made easier to read and gotten fast positive turnaround. Other requests from the community have stalled for months or years, overshadowed by other concerns.
I dunno about screenreaders, you’d probably want to ask someone in the blind/hard of seeing community.
there is also a question: if iNat does fall short… is there anything that does a better job? don’t stop using something useful if you haven’t got an alternative lined up.
Good points. I had wondered whether the apps, which seem to be the focus of more recent updates, might be more accessible than the website, but since I only use the website, the apps are mysterious to me.
Thanks for raising this, and for the added context on the regulation itself (from @zygy). The distinction between “your university has a direct arrangement with iNaturalist” versus “an instructor is choosing to use it” is not something I’m in a position to advise on, so I’d defer to your university’s own compliance/legal office on whether the regulation applies to your specific case.
To your question of how iNaturalist is doing on accessibility compliance at this time:
iNaturalist doesn’t yet meet WCAG 2.1/2.2 AA across the site and apps. Our current iOS app has a fair number of accessibility affordances in place, and we aim to have that in public beta on Android in the fourth quarter of this year. Even so, the app falls short in some key areas and is therefore not compliant. The website is a bit more variable, with pieces built recently that are near-compliant and much older pages that need substantial investment to make them so.
Accessibility has been an overall value at iNat for a long time. Our team has worked to include considerations for screenreaders in our mobile app especially. However, we still have a range of issues to address: things like color contrast, text/layout scaling, consistent screen-reader labeling, and keyboard navigation.
We haven’t historically had a defined compliance standard across the platform, nor have we had a specific workstream for accessibility — but we are working toward creating clearly scoped, ongoing accessibility compliance (including going through the codebase to get a clear picture of what’s in place and what isn’t).
We also anticipate bringing in external WCAG expertise across the platform to get to AA compliance.
That initial planning is happening in the fourth quarter of 2026 to prepare for our 2027 work cycle, when accessibility will become its own workstream. We haven’t set a defined date for reaching WCAG AA conformance, but that is our goal.
As the work progresses, I’m glad to share more specifics. And if you or others are running into particular blockers that are most important to your use cases (web vs app, search vs post), that kind of concrete feedback is useful to us as we plan our work.
Accessibility topics have come up numerous times in the forum, often with concrete feedback about what people would need changed.
In particular, there are a couple of threads from a blind user about the experience of using iNat with a screen reader:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/blind-iders-and-audio-ids/54576/
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/inaturalist-still-inaccessible-to-screen-reader-users/38033
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/inat-next-log-in-on-ios-completely-inaccessible-with-voiceover-screen-reader-see-replies-for-updates/61468/
I think a number of us in the forum found it rather disappointing that the reports of major, persistent inaccessibility issues got very little response from staff and that the new app was apparently not designed from the start to handle this better than the existing website and app interfaces.
Note also this recent thread on accessibility of the app from the point of view of people with limited internet access:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/inaturalist-and-inaccessibility-my-experience-as-a-homeless-man/82417/
One of the comments in that thread captures my sentiments on the matter:
Nice! Please, make sure to include important updates in blog posts, so they’ll be surfaced to more people and not only Forum regulars.
That is good news. I suspect that iNat may attract more people, who chose to engage with nature, and live with disability of various sorts. I have seen posts about colour blindness, blind and using a screen reader, deaf, mobility issues, neurodivergent (not necessarily a ‘disability’) We have one very active identifier, retired botanist – who retired due to vision issues – which is on their profile. And I see gentle comments – my eyes are not so good today, will look at this obs again tomorrow.
Thanks for the detailed update. I’m glad accessibility is high on the to-do list, though I’m sad we’re not there yet. As other users have mentioned, occasional updates about this on the iNat blog would be a great way to keep more users in the loop and would potentially mean y’all get a wider array of useful feedback about what issues to prioritize.