Accessibility
Last reviewed 20 September 2026, after two independent reviews of the live site and tutor.
Suno Dost is built for students who cannot see the screen, so accessibility is not a section of the product — it is the product. This page says what we have actually tested, what we know is still wrong, and how to tell us. We do not claim conformance to WCAG or to any other standard, because the manual testing that would justify such a claim is not finished.
How to use it without seeing the screen
- Just talk. Tap once anywhere on the big surface, then ask your question. When you stop speaking, it answers.
- Or just type. The text box is at the bottom. Typing never opens the microphone, and a typed question is answered in text and in speech.
- The tap language: one tap wakes it or stops it speaking; two taps repeat the last answer; three taps say where you are; press and hold to go quiet.
- Every tap has a spoken twin, because a screen reader takes the taps for itself: say “say that again”, “where am I”, “stop”, “help”.
- Everything spoken is also written. The full conversation appears under the answer, in order, untrimmed — for a braille display, for a magnifier, or for a teacher sitting alongside.
- The Study menu lists your class, language, current book and what mode you are in, and offers every mode as an ordinary button — so nothing depends on knowing a phrase in advance.
What we have tested, and what we have not
| Setting | Status |
|---|---|
| Desktop Chrome and Edge — keyboard only, typing, reading the transcript | Tested |
| Android Chrome with TalkBack | Tested by the founder; re-test after the September 2026 changes is pending |
| iPhone Safari with VoiceOver | Tested by the founder; re-test after the September 2026 changes is pending |
| Windows with NVDA or JAWS | Not yet tested |
| Firefox | Typing and reading work; speaking to it is not verified |
| Bluetooth braille displays | Not yet tested on hardware. The full text is exposed for a display to read; that it reads correctly is unverified |
| Braille Screen Input (iOS) and the TalkBack braille keyboard | Not yet tested on hardware |
| Phone vibration for braille dots | Works where the browser supports vibration — Android Chrome does, iPhone Safari does not, and there it is sound and speech only |
| Braille practice with a keyboard only — no pointer, no microphone, no vibration | Tested 20 September 2026: the six dot controls, building a letter, checking it, and the typed equivalents (“dot 1”, “clear dots”, “check”) |
| Reflow at 320 pixels, 200% text, 400% zoom | Not yet measured |
| .brf braille files opening on real braille software or hardware | Not yet tested |
| eBraille editions | Planned. Not built. |
Phone vibration is not a raised-dot braille surface. It teaches the pattern of a braille cell by touch and sound; it does not replace a braille display, a slate and stylus, or a teacher.
What the braille module teaches — and what it does not
It teaches the dot patterns of the letters, and it ends when the alphabet ends. It does not yet teach capital signs, punctuation, number sequences beyond the number sign, or contractions, and no qualified braille teacher has reviewed the curriculum. Advancing through the letters is exposure to the patterns; it is not literacy in Unified English Braille or in Bharati Braille, and we will not describe it as such.
Every exercise, including building a letter dot by dot, can be completed with a keyboard alone. If vibration does not work on your device, say “tell me the dots” or “build it” and the lesson continues in sound, speech and controls.
Known problems we are working on
- Most figures have no description. 161 of the 3,910 figures we have found carry a teacher-approved description. For the rest, Suno Dost declines and offers to read the text around the figure. It will not improvise one.
- Some scanned text is damaged. An audit flags roughly 10,000 word-level extraction defects across the corpus. Those words are barred from quizzes and exams, and are queued for correction against the source pages. A damaged word may still be read aloud inside a passage.
- Coverage is uneven. Ask for your book and class and Suno Dost will tell you what it has. A book that is not ingested is refused, not approximated.
- The interface is not fully translated. Hindi and Urdu answers are in Hindi and Urdu, and so are most status messages, but some remain in English.
- Some scanned words are read as an honest gap. Where our scan produced a word the book did not print, the reading says “a word our scan could not read” rather than guessing. Four such spans are recorded so far; correcting them against the printed page is review work, not something we will let software invent.
- No usability session with blind and low-vision students has been run yet on the September 2026 build. Automated checks cannot substitute for that, and we do not pretend otherwise. A second independent interface review on 20 September 2026 found twelve further defects in exactly the places automated checks had not gone — inside the braille lesson, after a refusal, and after a language request.
Tell us when something does not work
This is the most useful thing you can do for the next student. Email shekhar.sattiraju@gmail.com, or copy the address shekhar.sattiraju@gmail.com into whatever you use. Tell us your phone, your screen reader, and what you were trying to do. A person reads every message.
If Suno Dost gave a wrong answer, say “that is wrong” to it, or send us the question and what it said.