Accessibility

Last updated 25 September 2026.

We want everyone to be able to design embroidery with Stitch Slop, whether you use a mouse, a keyboard, a screen reader, your voice, or a switch. This page says what works today and how to tell us when something gets in your way.

Our goal

We aim to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at level AA. We aren't there everywhere yet, and we keep working on it.

What works

• Keyboard. Nearly every button, menu and setting can be reached with Tab and used with Enter or Space. Menus and dialogs close with Esc and put you back where you were. Press ⌘ / (Ctrl / on Windows) to see every shortcut. The curve graphs (such as a fill's density profile) and a few moves in the thread colour chart still need a mouse or finger.
• Screen readers. Every control and every setting has a name that says what it does. The editor announces what changed after each action, and describes the design in words: how many objects, which threads, and what is selected.
• Voice control. Controls are named by the words you see on them, so Voice Control on a Mac or Dragon on Windows can press them by name.
• Sewing order without dragging. Select an object and press ⌥ ↑ or ⌥ ↓ (Alt on Windows) to move it up or down the sewing sequence, or add ⇧ to move it to the top or bottom. The right-click menu has Sew earlier and Sew later too.
• One-key shortcuts can be turned off. If speech software or tremor sets off shortcuts by accident, turn off Single-key shortcuts in Project settings. Shortcuts that use ⌘ or Ctrl keep working.
• Contrast. Text meets a 4.5 to 1 contrast ratio in both the light and dark themes.
• Less motion. If your computer is set to reduce motion, animations stop or slow down.
• Thread colours by name. Threads are described by colour name (such as "dark blue") as well as by swatch, so you don't have to tell colours apart by eye.
• Talking to your agent. If you connect an AI agent, you can speak to it with the Talk button, have its replies read aloud, and hear short updates on what it is doing. Each one is its own setting. Speech is recognised on your own computer and is not sent anywhere else. This needs a browser that can recognise speech on your computer; today that is recent Chrome on desktop.
• Pointing things out. A connected agent can point to parts of the screen with rings, arrows and numbered or coloured markers. It never covers the screen with pop-up text.
• Trackpad and mouse. You can zoom with a pinch, by holding ⌘ or Ctrl while you scroll, or with the keyboard. In Project settings you can choose whether scrolling moves the view or zooms.

Tell us

If something gets in your way, please tell us with Report bug in the editor (you choose what goes with your message). Tell us what you were trying to do and what you use to get around (for example, a screen reader or the keyboard).

How we checked

We check the editor on every change with automated tests: axe, Chrome's accessibility tree, and 196 checks of our own for keyboard use, names, contrast, menus and speech. They cover the desktop editor in Chrome.

See also the terms of use, the privacy page and about Stitch Slop.