StudyScope is a virtual microscope for science classes. Every student in the room should be able to use it, including students and teachers who navigate by keyboard, use a screen reader, magnify the screen, or are sensitive to motion. This page describes where the Service stands today, what we know falls short, and how to tell us about a barrier.
Our target is WCAG 2.2 Level AA. The Service substantially meets it on the pages we evaluated, with the known gaps listed below. If anything on StudyScope gets in your way, email support@thestudyscope.com and we will work with you on a fix or an alternative.
Our commitment
We design and build StudyScope to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at Level A and Level AA, which also covers WCAG 2.1 AA and the Section 508 web standard (WCAG 2.0 AA). Accessibility checks are part of how we review new features, and we update this page and the conformance report below when the Service changes.
How we evaluated
This is a self-evaluation carried out by the StudyScope developer on October 9, 2026. It is not a third-party audit. The evaluation combined:
- Automated testing with the axe-core 4.10 engine, using its WCAG 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 Level A and AA rules, in current desktop Chrome.
- Manual review of keyboard-only use (tab order, visible focus, skip links, focus handling in dialogs), page structure (headings, landmarks, page titles, form labels and error messages), the accessibility tree that screen readers read, color contrast, reflow at 320 CSS pixels wide (equivalent to 400% zoom), text spacing, target sizes, and the reduced-motion setting.
Pages evaluated: the home page, the slide catalog (home, browse and category pages, and the slide detail view), the deep-zoom viewer on the slides that anyone can open without an account, the guides index and a guide, About, Privacy, this page, the class join page and the student live-lesson screens, the embeddable slide viewer, and the log-in and sign-up forms.
Not yet fully evaluated: the signed-in teacher workspace (library, lesson editor, point-of-interest editor, live presenting, account, organization and admin screens). It is built from the same components as the pages above, but we have reviewed it only at the code level so far. Nor have we yet tested with screen readers such as NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver or TalkBack in daily use. Both are next: we plan to extend the evaluation to the teacher workspace, test with screen readers, and commission an independent third-party audit, and we will update this report as each is completed.
Supported browsers and assistive technology
StudyScope runs in current versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari, including on Chromebooks, iPads and phones. It relies on standard HTML semantics and ARIA so that it works with the screen readers, magnifiers, voice control and switch software built into or commonly used with those browsers. It does not work in Internet Explorer.
Accessibility features
- Keyboard access. Navigation, the catalog, forms, dialogs and the viewer’s tool buttons all work from the keyboard. A “Skip to content” link starts each page, and the home page’s scrolling slide list has its own skip link.
- Keyboard control of the microscope. In the deep-zoom viewer, focus the slide image, then use the arrow keys (or W, A, S, D) to pan, plus and minus to zoom, and 0 to reset the view. Zoom in, zoom out, reset and pan buttons are also on screen, and a zoom slider sets magnification directly.
- Measuring and marking without dragging. The measure tool and point-of-interest boxes work three ways: drag, click or tap two points, or use the keyboard. With the tool selected from the keyboard, a crosshair appears; move it with the arrow keys (Shift for bigger steps), press Enter to place each point, and Escape to cancel.
- Labels and measurements as text. A “Labels and measurements” panel in the viewer lists every point of interest, box, measurement and drawing on the slide, with a “Go to” button for each point of interest. Points of interest and finished measurements are also announced to screen readers.
- Visible focus. Every control we tested shows a focus ring, and focus stays clear of the fixed navigation bar.
- Dialogs. The slide detail view and the viewer move focus inside when they open, keep it there while open, close with Escape, and return focus to where you were.
- Reduced motion. When your device is set to reduce motion, the scrolling slide list stops, the catalog slideshow stops advancing, and card-to-dialog animations are skipped. The scrolling list and the slideshow also have their own pause buttons.
- Zoom and small screens. Pages reflow to a single column down to 320 pixels wide with no sideways scrolling, and text can be enlarged with browser zoom.
- Text alongside the images. Every slide has a title, its scientific name, stain and magnification, a written description and a “What to look for” guide, and many have questions and answers. Our guides add labeled diagrams of key specimens, and images across the site have text alternatives.
- Clear forms. Every field has a visible label. Errors are described in text, tied to their field, and focus moves to the first field that needs attention.
- Announcements. Status messages, form errors, the measurement readout and the step captions in a live lesson are announced to screen readers without moving focus.
- No student accounts. Students join a lesson with a short class code, with no sign-in, password or CAPTCHA to get through.
Known limitations
We would rather tell you about these gaps than have you find them. Each gap that affects WCAG conformance has a planned fix and a target date.
- Microscope imagery is visual. A deep-zoom slide is a gigapixel photograph of a real specimen. No text can fully replace exploring it. Each slide is identified by name, scientific name and stain, and its description, “What to look for” notes and our guides describe the structures students are asked to find. For a student who cannot see the image, teachers can use those texts as the basis for an alternative activity, and we are glad to help plan one.
- Freehand drawing needs a mouse, finger or stylus. Drawing follows the path of your hand, so it has no keyboard equivalent. Every other viewer tool works from the keyboard and without dragging.
- The projector and embedded viewers are simpler. The display-only projector window and slides embedded on other sites use the viewer’s built-in keyboard and zoom controls but do not yet have the pan buttons or the “Labels and measurements” panel.
- Light theme only. StudyScope does not yet have a dark theme. The microscope viewer itself uses dark controls around the slide.
- Third-party pages. Payment uses our payment processor’s hosted checkout and customer portal, which have their own accessibility programs.
Accessibility Conformance Report
The report below follows the VPAT® 2.5Rev WCAG edition format from the Information Technology Industry Council. Each “Partially Supports” row includes our plan and target date for full conformance.
- Product
- StudyScope web application (thestudyscope.com)
- Version
- Production web app as deployed October 2026
- Report date
- October 9, 2026
- Description
- A browser-based virtual microscope with a catalog of real, deep-zoom scanned microscope slides, guides, and tools for teachers to save, annotate, measure, build lessons, and present live to students who join with a class code.
- Contact
- support@thestudyscope.com
- Evaluation methods
- Self-evaluation by the developer: axe-core 4.10 automated testing plus manual keyboard, structure, contrast, reflow, text-spacing and motion review in desktop Chrome, as described above. No third-party audit; no testing yet with screen readers in daily use.
- Scope
- Public site, catalog, free-to-view deep-zoom viewer, embeddable viewer, class join and student live-lesson screens, and account forms. The signed-in teacher workspace was reviewed at the code level only.
Applicable standards
| Standard or guideline | Included in report |
|---|---|
| WCAG 2.0 | Level A (Yes), Level AA (Yes), Level AAA (No) |
| WCAG 2.1 | Level A (Yes), Level AA (Yes), Level AAA (No) |
| WCAG 2.2 | Level A (Yes), Level AA (Yes), Level AAA (No) |
Terms
- Supports: the functionality has at least one method that meets the criterion without known defects, or meets it with an equivalent facilitation.
- Partially Supports: some functionality does not meet the criterion.
- Does Not Support: the majority of functionality does not meet the criterion.
- Not Applicable: the criterion is not relevant to the product.
WCAG 2.2 report
Criteria new in WCAG 2.1 and 2.2 are marked as such. Remarks describe the evaluated scope.
| Criteria | Conformance Level | Remarks and Explanations |
|---|---|---|
| 1.1.1 Non-text Content | Supports | Images have text alternatives and decorative images are hidden from assistive technology. The deep-zoom viewer is named for its slide, and each slide is identified by title, scientific name and stain, with a written description and "What to look for" notes. Points of interest, boxes, drawings and measurements drawn on the slide canvas have a text equivalent in the viewer’s "Labels and measurements" panel (labels, "Go to" buttons, drawing counts and measurement values), kept in sync as items change, and a step’s points of interest and finished measurements are announced through a polite live region. Embedded slides show no overlays. The display-only projector window mirrors the presenting teacher’s screen, where the panel is available. |
| 1.2.1 Audio-only and Video-only (Prerecorded) | Not Applicable | The Service contains no prerecorded or live audio or video content. |
| 1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded) | Not Applicable | The Service contains no prerecorded or live audio or video content. |
| 1.2.3 Audio Description or Media Alternative (Prerecorded) | Not Applicable | The Service contains no prerecorded or live audio or video content. |
| 1.3.1 Info and Relationships | Supports | Headings, lists, landmarks, tables and form labels are marked up semantically; every evaluated page has one main heading and no skipped heading levels. |
| 1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence | Supports | Reading and focus order follow the visual order. The duplicate copies used to loop the scrolling slide list are hidden from assistive technology. |
| 1.3.3 Sensory Characteristics | Supports | Instructions do not rely on shape, size, position or sound alone. |
| 1.4.1 Use of Color | Supports | Links in body text are underlined, and errors and states are given in text, not by color alone. |
| 1.4.2 Audio Control | Not Applicable | The Service plays no audio. |
| 2.1.1 Keyboard | Supports | Navigation, catalog, forms, dialogs and the viewer tool buttons work by keyboard. On the focused slide, arrows or W/A/S/D pan, plus and minus zoom, and 0 resets. The measure tool and point-of-interest boxes (including lesson-editor authoring) have a keyboard crosshair: arrows move it, Enter places each point, Escape cancels. Freehand drawing depends on the path of the pointer’s movement and is the only pointer-only tool, as the exception allows. |
| 2.1.2 No Keyboard Trap | Supports | Dialogs keep focus inside on purpose and close with Escape or a Close button; the viewer canvas can be tabbed away from. |
| 2.1.4 Character Key Shortcuts (WCAG 2.1) | Supports | The viewer's single-key shortcuts (pan, zoom, reset) only work while the slide image has keyboard focus. |
| 2.2.1 Timing Adjustable | Supports | No task has a time limit. A live lesson ends when the teacher ends it, which is a real-time event. |
| 2.2.2 Pause, Stop, Hide | Supports | The scrolling slide list on the home page and the catalog slideshow have pause buttons, and both stop when the device asks for reduced motion. |
| 2.3.1 Three Flashes or Below Threshold | Supports | No content flashes. |
| 2.4.1 Bypass Blocks | Supports | Pages with site navigation start with a "Skip to content" link, and the scrolling slide list has its own skip link. Sign-in, sign-up and join pages have no repeated blocks. |
| 2.4.2 Page Titled | Supports | Every page has a unique, descriptive title. |
| 2.4.3 Focus Order | Supports | Focus moves in a logical order. Dialogs take focus when they open and return it when they close; the sign-up steps and form errors move focus to the next field that needs attention. |
| 2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context) | Supports | Link text, or the link text with its surrounding card or sentence, describes the destination. Image links take their name from the image's text alternative. |
| 2.5.1 Pointer Gestures (WCAG 2.1) | Supports | Pinch-to-zoom has single-tap zoom buttons as an alternative. |
| 2.5.2 Pointer Cancellation (WCAG 2.1) | Supports | Controls act on release, using standard click events. |
| 2.5.3 Label in Name (WCAG 2.1) | Supports | Accessible names of buttons and links contain their visible text. |
| 2.5.4 Motion Actuation (WCAG 2.1) | Not Applicable | No function is triggered by device motion. |
| 3.1.1 Language of Page | Supports | Every page declares English (lang="en"). |
| 3.2.1 On Focus | Supports | Focusing a control never changes the context. |
| 3.2.2 On Input | Supports | Typing in a field or choosing a filter updates results in place without changing the context. |
| 3.2.6 Consistent Help (WCAG 2.2) | Supports | Contact details (the support email) are on the About and Accessibility pages, which every page footer links to in the same relative order. |
| 3.3.1 Error Identification | Supports | Form errors are described in text next to the field, marked invalid, and linked to the field. |
| 3.3.2 Labels or Instructions | Supports | Every field has a visible label and, where needed, a hint (for example, password length). |
| 3.3.7 Redundant Entry (WCAG 2.2) | Supports | Information entered in one sign-up step (seats, organization, code) is carried forward and never asked for twice. |
| 4.1.1 Parsing | Supports | Obsolete in WCAG 2.2 and treated as always satisfied for WCAG 2.0 and 2.1. Markup is generated by the Vue framework and axe-core found no duplicate-ID or ARIA structure errors. |
| 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value | Supports | Controls have accessible names, roles and states (pressed, expanded, invalid). The viewer canvas is exposed as a named application region with keyboard instructions. axe-core reported no name, role or value violations on evaluated pages. |
| Criteria | Conformance Level | Remarks and Explanations |
|---|---|---|
| 1.2.4 Captions (Live) | Not Applicable | The Service contains no prerecorded or live audio or video content. |
| 1.2.5 Audio Description (Prerecorded) | Not Applicable | The Service contains no prerecorded or live audio or video content. |
| 1.3.4 Orientation (WCAG 2.1) | Supports | Works in portrait and landscape; orientation is never locked. |
| 1.3.5 Identify Input Purpose (WCAG 2.1) | Supports | Name, email, password and organization fields carry autocomplete attributes. |
| 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) | Supports | Text meets 4.5:1 (3:1 for large text) in the light theme, the only theme offered. Viewer controls use light text on dark chrome. Text over photographs sits on a solid or scrimmed backing. |
| 1.4.4 Resize Text | Supports | Text scales with browser zoom to 200% and beyond without loss of content; pinch-zoom is never disabled. |
| 1.4.5 Images of Text | Supports | Text is real text. The exceptions are logos, badges and labeled specimen diagrams, where the labels are part of an image with significant other visual content. |
| 1.4.10 Reflow (WCAG 2.1) | Supports | Evaluated pages reflow to 320 CSS pixels with no horizontal page scrolling. The deep-zoom slide and wide data tables (like this report) are two-dimensional content and scroll within their own frame. |
| 1.4.11 Non-text Contrast (WCAG 2.1) | Supports | Focus rings, buttons, icons and viewer controls meet 3:1. Text fields, selects, text areas, search fields, join-code fields and the selected segment of toggle controls use a dedicated border of at least 3.26:1 against every background they sit on (3.78:1 on white), and focus adds a 2px accent outline (8.8:1). Checkboxes use the browser’s default border. |
| 1.4.12 Text Spacing (WCAG 2.1) | Supports | With line height 1.5, paragraph spacing 2em, letter spacing 0.12em and word spacing 0.16em applied, the home page, catalog, slide browse, slide details and guides lose no content. Subject chips, category labels and tag options wrap, and category descriptions and lesson titles are not clamped. |
| 1.4.13 Content on Hover or Focus (WCAG 2.1) | Supports | Menus open on click or Enter and close with Escape. Hover hints are native browser tooltips. |
| 2.4.5 Multiple Ways | Supports | Content can be reached through site navigation, catalog search, category browsing, guides and footer links. |
| 2.4.6 Headings and Labels | Supports | Page headings describe each page’s purpose (for example, "Log in to StudyScope", "Get started with StudyScope", "Reset your password"), and form fields have visible, descriptive labels. |
| 2.4.7 Focus Visible | Supports | Every keyboard stop on evaluated pages shows a visible focus indicator. |
| 2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured (Minimum) (WCAG 2.2) | Supports | Focused controls scroll clear of the fixed navigation bar, including when tabbing backward. |
| 2.5.7 Dragging Movements (WCAG 2.2) | Supports | Every drag has a single-pointer alternative: pan buttons in the zoom bar, zoom buttons and slider, click-or-tap placement of both points for measuring and point-of-interest boxes, and "Go to" buttons for points of interest. Freehand drawing is essential dragging and is excepted. |
| 2.5.8 Target Size (Minimum) (WCAG 2.2) | Supports | Buttons are at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels, most 44. Smaller text links sit inline in sentences or are spaced so that 24-pixel targets do not overlap. |
| 3.1.2 Language of Parts | Supports | All content is in English. Scientific (Latin) names are technical terms, which the criterion exempts. |
| 3.2.3 Consistent Navigation | Supports | The main navigation and footer appear in the same order on every page that has them. |
| 3.2.4 Consistent Identification | Supports | Controls with the same function (Add to Library, zoom, close) are labeled the same way throughout. |
| 3.3.3 Error Suggestion | Supports | Error messages say how to fix the problem (for example, "Use at least 8 characters"). |
| 3.3.4 Error Prevention (Legal, Financial, Data) | Supports | Purchases are reviewed and confirmed on the payment processor's checkout page; deleting content asks for confirmation. |
| 3.3.8 Accessible Authentication (Minimum) (WCAG 2.2) | Supports | Sign-in uses email and password with paste and password-manager autofill allowed, plus a show-password toggle. There is no CAPTCHA or cognitive test. Students never sign in. |
| 4.1.3 Status Messages (WCAG 2.1) | Supports | Toasts, result counts, form errors, measurement readouts and live-lesson step captions use status, alert or live regions, so they are announced without moving focus. |
Report a barrier or ask for help
If you run into a barrier on StudyScope, or need content from the Service in another format, email support@thestudyscope.com with “Accessibility” in the subject. It helps to tell us:
- the page or slide you were on (a link is perfect);
- what you were trying to do and what got in the way; and
- the browser, device and any assistive technology you were using.
We read every message. We aim to reply within five business days, and we will tell you what we plan to fix and when. Where a fix will take time, we will work with you or your school on an alternative in the meantime. Schools and districts that need this report in another format, or as part of a procurement review, can reach us at the same address.