Accessibility

An accessible dashboard for everyone.

Last reviewed · 2026-04-27

Conformance

BidChamp aims to conform with WCAG 2.1 Level AA, which is referenced by Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act (29 U.S.C. §794d, refresh 2017).

We use pa11y for local accessibility audits and run periodic manual screen-reader smoke tests using VoiceOver (macOS) as our primary screen reader and NVDA (Windows) as a secondary target.

Stage 5A (April 2026) addressed: skip-link, visible focus rings, semantic ARIA landmarks, icon-button labels, 11-color badge contrast remediation (all now pass WCAG AA 4.5:1), focus-trap on modals (preflight, refusal, override), and dual aria-live toast regions (polite for success/info, assertive for errors).

Known issues

  • Some agency-name strings from SAM.gov contain unicode or special characters that may render inconsistently across screen readers. We strip non-printable characters on display.
  • The kanban pipeline drag-and-drop reordering is a mouse-only interaction. A keyboard- accessible alternative is available: use the card action menu (the three-dot or Move button) to move a card between pipeline stages without drag-and-drop.
  • AI chat panel, PDF viewer, and document upload modal do not yet implement a full focus trap. Esc will close these panels but Tab may exit the panel boundary. These are scheduled for Stage 5C remediation.
  • Mobile touch-target sizes and iOS VoiceOver / Android TalkBack are not yet formally tested. These are deferred to Stage 5C.
  • Section L/M compliance matrix — scanned-PDF carve-out: Auto-extraction works on text-extractable PDFs only. Scanned image PDFs (e.g. older agency uploads, certain OCR-rejected scans) currently return an empty extraction with a 422 status and a clear "Stage 7B" message. OCR fallback is planned for Stage 7B and will close this gap. In the meantime, manually keying compliance items into the matrix via the "Add row" button remains fully accessible.

Reporting an issue

If you encounter an accessibility barrier, please contact us at support@bidchamp.ai. We aim to respond within 2 business days and resolve issues within 10 business days.

Compatibility

BidChamp is tested with the latest two stable versions of Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge on macOS and Windows. Our primary screen-reader target is VoiceOver (macOS); NVDA (Windows) is a secondary target. We do not currently formally test with JAWS or TalkBack, though we welcome bug reports from users of those assistive technologies.

Technical specifications

BidChamp is a server-rendered web application that progressively enhances with JavaScript. Core navigation and reading work without JavaScript enabled. Features that require JavaScript include: AI proposal generation, kanban drag-and-drop, live opportunity filtering, and the bid writer.

The application uses HTML5 semantic elements, WAI-ARIA roles and properties where native semantics are insufficient, and CSS custom properties for theming (light and dark mode). No third-party widget libraries are used for core navigation.