Overview
The micro:bit support site at support.microbit.org provides a knowledge base of help articles and a ticketing system for contacting the support team. The site is hosted on Freshdesk, a third-party platform. The Micro:bit Educational Foundation manages the content of support articles, but has limited control over the platform's interface and functionality. We are aware of several accessibility barriers and are actively looking for a new or upgraded third party solution with better accessibility. In the meantime, this statement outlines the accessibility you can expect with the support articles and ticketing system.
Alternative contact method: If you experience accessibility barriers with the support site, you can email us directly at accessibility@microbit.org.
Screen reader support
Ticketing system
The form for submitting a new support ticket has significant accessibility barriers and is not recommended for screen reader users.
We recommend screen reader users email us directly rather than using the ticket form.
Known issues with the ticket form include:
- Form fields are not properly labelled (for example, email field, contact type dropdown)
- The description text editor is a keyboard trap and contains unlabelled fields
- Validation errors are not announced when fields are missing
- There is no feedback when files are attached
- Success messages are not focused after submission
Search
The search function has partial screen reader support:
- The autocomplete results list is navigable with arrow keys, but article names are not read aloud
- Pressing Enter to search works, but focus returns to the top of the page rather than the results
- For best results, type your full search term and press Enter to view all results
Support articles
Support articles are generally navigable with a screen reader. However:
- Images are embedded as clickable links to an image gallery. This gallery is not screen reader accessible, but if you accidentally end up in the gallery you can close it by pressing Escape. The alt text is available when you reach an image, without clicking on it to enter the gallery.
- Some older articles may have missing alt text, have unlabelled links, or heading structure issues.
Display settings
Text scaling and zoom
The Freshdesk platform includes a viewport setting that may disable pinch-to-zoom on some browsers on Android devices. You can override this in the browser accessibility settings (for example, Settings > Accessibility > "Force enable zoom" in Chrome).
Colour and contrast
Some navigation elements and links have contrast that does not meet WCAG requirements, particularly navigational breadcrumbs. Links are identified by colour only (no underline), which may be difficult to distinguish for users with colour vision differences.
Keyboard navigation
The site is broadly keyboard navigable, but some elements in the page lack visible focus indicators, falling back to browser defaults. If you are using a keyboard to navigate, you may find Chrome or Edge browsers give a better experience than Firefox. If you use Safari on macOS, you may need to enable keyboard navigation in macOS System Settings.
The hamburger menu on narrow mobile screens may not always be correctly positioned for assistive technology users.
Content standards
For all new support articles, we aim to meet WCAG accessibility guidelines for the article content:
- We use structured headings to break up content into logical sections
- All essential information is provided in text form, not only in images or videos
- Images have descriptive alt text
- Links have meaningful labels that make sense out of context
For articles written or last edited before 2024, there may be some accessibility issues including:
- Missing or inadequate alt text on images
- Links labelled with URLs or "here" rather than descriptive text
- Visual styling used instead of proper heading structure
- Embedded MP4 videos without captions (most are silent demonstrations)
Once we have chosen a long term support solution, we will plan a review and update of legacy content. We expect this work to start in 2026.
Videos
YouTube videos can be navigated with keyboard controls and support captions
Some embedded MP4 files do not have captions, but are usually silent demonstrations accompanied by text descriptions
Reporting issues
If you encounter an accessibility barrier on the support site, please email us at accessibility@microbit.org describing the issue you experienced.