A website you're not afraid to update should be one anyone can update, and one anyone can read. This page says what that means in practice: the standard we work to, what Cabin does for you, where we know we fall short, and how to reach us when something doesn't work for you. We'd rather hear about a problem than have you work around it quietly.
Our commitment
We aim for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at level AA across this website, the Cabin app, and every theme we ship. That is the standard most accessibility laws point to, and it is the one we hold ourselves to from the first screen, not as a fix afterwards.
Accessibility is part of how we design and build. Every new screen is checked against the guidelines before it ships, and a problem that blocks someone from using Cabin is treated as a bug of the highest severity, the same as a site being down.
How Cabin is built
The app and this site are written in plain, semantic HTML: real headings in order, real buttons and links, labelled form fields, and landmarks so a screen reader can jump straight to the content. Visual components are built on an accessible component library and restyled, not drawn from scratch.
- Everything works with a keyboard alone. Focus is always visible, the order follows the page, and nothing traps you.
- Text and interface colours meet a 4.5:1 contrast ratio, in light and dark mode. Dark mode follows your system setting.
- Text can be enlarged to 200% and the layout still works, on a phone as on a desktop.
- Animation is kept to a minimum and respects the reduce-motion setting.
- Icons carry text alternatives or are hidden from assistive technology when they are decorative.
- The editor is usable with a screen reader: blocks announce what they are, and every action has a keyboard shortcut.
We test with a keyboard, with VoiceOver on macOS and iOS, and with NVDA on Windows, alongside automated checks that run on every change.
Your site
The themes Cabin ships are built to the same standard, so a site starts out accessible: readable type at a comfortable size, headings that follow the structure of what you wrote, skip links, visible focus, and forms a screen reader can fill in.
Cabin also helps with the things only you can decide:
- Every photo gets a first draft of alt text when you upload it, and the editor asks you to review it. You can mark a picture as decorative so it is skipped instead of described.
- When you choose brand colours, Cabin warns you as you pick if text on your background would fall below 4.5:1 contrast, and shows a preview in light and dark before you save.
- The SEO panel flags images without alt text and headings out of order, since what helps a search engine read your page helps a person using a screen reader too.
- Fonts you choose are served by Cabin with sensible fallbacks, and themes never set text so small it cannot be read.
What you publish is still yours to get right. A theme you build or change yourself, code you inject, and content you write are outside what we can promise for you, but the tools above are there to make the right thing the easy thing.
Where we fall short
Cabin is new, and some of it isn't where we want it yet. We'd rather tell you than have you find out:
- Dragging blocks and menu items to reorder them has keyboard equivalents, but the screen reader announcements while dragging are sparse.
- The theme file editor is a code editor, and code editors remain hard to use with a screen reader. Themes can also be edited as files on your own computer with the Cabin CLI.
- Embedded players from YouTube, Vimeo and the other providers are theirs, and their accessibility is outside our control.
- The assistant describes screenshots it takes of your site in words, but its view of a page is not a substitute for testing with assistive technology.
We update this list as things are fixed, and the changelog says when they are. Until a problem is fixed, email us and we'll find you a way around it.
Tell us
If anything on this site, in the app, or on a site built with one of our themes gets in your way, email accessibility@cabincms.com. Tell us what you were trying to do, what happened instead, and what you were using (your browser, and any assistive technology). A person reads every message and replies within two working days, and a problem that blocks you is fixed ahead of everything else.
If you are not satisfied with how we respond, you can contact the body that enforces accessibility law where you live. We would appreciate the chance to put things right first.
Something in the way?
A person reads every message and replies within two working days.
Previous versions
- First version.