Accessibility
We would rather tell you exactly where Homestead stands than claim a level of accessibility we have not tested.
Homestead is team chat you run on your own hardware. Accessibility matters in software like this more than most: a chat tool is where a team's day happens, and somebody who cannot use it is shut out of the conversation, not just inconvenienced by a website.
We are measuring Homestead against WCAG 2.1 Level AA, which is the standard referenced by the Accessible Canada Act, AODA in Ontario, Section 508 in the United States, and EN 301 549 in the European Union.
Where we are honestly at
Homestead partially conforms to WCAG 2.1 AA. "Partially" is doing real work in that sentence. Some things we have measured and fixed. Others we know are broken and have not fixed yet. The list below is the whole list, as far as we know it.
We are not going to describe Homestead as "WCAG 2.1 AA compliant" until it is. If you are evaluating this for a workplace, you need the real picture, and an overstated claim would waste your time and ours.
What works today
Colour and contrast
Every text and background pair in the application has been measured, not eyeballed. All of them meet or beat the 4.5:1 minimum, most by a wide margin. This was not always true: an earlier version had body text at 2.54:1 in more than a hundred places, which we found by measuring rather than by anyone complaining.
Keyboard focus
Every interactive element shows a visible focus ring when you reach it by keyboard. Previously the application suppressed focus outlines globally, which made keyboard navigation possible but invisible — you could tab through the app with no way to tell where you were.
Focus order
Tab order follows the visual reading order of the page. Nothing uses a
positive tabindex and no CSS rule reorders content away from its
place in the markup, which are the two usual causes of focus jumping somewhere
unexpected.
Reduced motion
If your system is set to reduce motion, transitions and smooth scrolling turn off.
Text scaling and zoom
Layouts use relative units and reflow rather than breaking when text is enlarged or the window is narrow.
What does not work yet
These are real defects. We are listing them because you deserve to know before you commit a team to this, not after.
| What is wrong | Who it affects |
|---|---|
| Screen reader labels are incomplete. Channels, server icons, member rows and modal close buttons have no accessible names, so a screen reader announces them as unlabelled buttons. | Anyone using a screen reader. This is the most serious gap on the list and the one we are working on first. |
| Unread and mention badges are visual only. The count is a coloured dot with no text alternative. | Screen reader users get no indication that a channel has unread messages. |
The active channel is not announced. It is styled
differently but carries no aria-current. |
Screen reader users cannot tell which channel they are in. |
Collapsible channel categories do not report their state.
No aria-expanded. |
Screen reader users cannot tell whether a category is open or closed. |
| Dialogs do not trap focus. Tabbing inside a dialog eventually walks out into the page behind it. | Keyboard and screen reader users, who can get lost in content that is visually hidden behind an overlay. |
| Online status is colour only. Available, away and busy are three coloured dots with no shape or text difference. | Anyone who cannot distinguish those colours. This fails WCAG 1.4.1. |
| Two images have no alternative text. | Screen reader users, who hear nothing where those images are. |
| No light theme. Homestead is dark only. | People who find light text on a dark background harder to read, including some people with astigmatism. |
We have not tested with assistive technology yet
Everything above comes from measuring the code and navigating by keyboard. We have not yet run Homestead through NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver or TalkBack, and we are not going to imply otherwise. Testing with real assistive technology usually finds problems that code review does not, so expect this list to grow before it shrinks.
This website
The site you are reading is a separate thing from the application, and it is in better shape. It has a skip link, one heading hierarchy, visible focus, text that meets AA contrast, no cookies, no analytics and no third-party scripts.
One bug is worth mentioning because it shows how this goes. Until today the "Get Homestead" button in the top-right corner rendered pale text on orange at a contrast of 1.11:1 — effectively invisible. A navigation style rule was more specific than the button's own rule and quietly overrode its colour. Nothing flagged it; a person said the button was hard to see, and measuring it found the cause in a minute. That is the useful lesson: automated checks and careful CSS still miss things, and someone telling us is the fastest way to find out.
Conformance claim, in the formal language
| Standard | WCAG 2.1 Level AA |
|---|---|
| Conformance | Partially conformant |
| Basis | Internal code review and measurement. No third-party audit, no assistive-technology testing. |
| Scope | Homestead web and desktop client, and this website. The Android client has not been assessed. |
| Reviewed | 26 September 2026 |
A full Accessibility Conformance Report (VPAT) is not finished. We would rather publish one that is accurate than one that is early, and we are working through the gaps above first. If your procurement process needs a VPAT, write to us and we will tell you honestly where it stands.
Tell us when something does not work
Email [email protected] and describe what you were trying to do and what happened. If you use assistive technology, telling us which one and which version helps a lot.
We aim to reply within five business days. think3d is a very small operation, so you will be talking to the person who writes the code, not a support queue.
If something here blocks you from using Homestead at work, say so plainly in the message and we will treat it as a defect rather than a feature request.
A note on self-hosting
Because you run Homestead yourself, you control the version you are on. An accessibility fix reaches you when you update your own server, not when we decide to deploy something. That means fixes are not held back by anyone's release calendar, but it also means an out-of-date deployment stays out of date. If accessibility matters to your team, keep the server current.