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Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-04-23 12:16:52 +02:00

2.5 KiB

Accessibility + i18n Decisions

A11y + i18n are Tier-0 contracts, not Tier-6 polish.


D-20: A11y is a Tier-0 contract

  • Date: 2026-04-21
  • Decision: Every widget primitive wraps its interaction surface in a Semantics node at the point of creation. A11y coverage is a test-time gate (ci/test_a11y.sh), not a post-hoc polish pass. ensureSemantics() fires at app boot; Flutter's semantics tree is always populated.
  • Rationale: Retrofitting a11y onto a grown UI is what every project that skips this promises to do later and then doesn't. Making it a Tier-0 contract costs one Semantics line per primitive and a semantic-coverage test; postponing costs a rewrite.
  • Cost: Widget authors maintain correct labels; tests reject new primitives without semantics. Enforced by app/test/a11y/ coverage tests.
  • Raised by: 2026-04-21 planning.

D-21: i18n is a Tier-0 contract (fframe pattern + locale-fallback chain)

  • Date: 2026-04-21
  • Decision: All user-facing strings resolve through a namespaced i18n catalogue loader ported from fframe's text-driven pattern, extended with a locale-fallback chain fframe lacks. JSON per locale; I18n.of(context).t('namespace.key', {vars}). Missing keys resolve down the chain (e.g. en_GBen → default), never fail silently; missing at the base locale logs a dev-mode error.
  • Rationale: Flutter's intl + ARB codegen is inflexible for plugin-contributed catalogs (see R-4) — we need per-extension catalogs that merge without a codegen step. fframe's shape fits; its silent-fallback behaviour does not, so we add the chain.
  • Cost: JSON has no comments and no trailing commas; translation tooling has to accept that. Separate i18n facade on every feature.
  • Raised by: 2026-04-21 planning.

D-22: WCAG-AA contrast gate on bundled themes

  • Date: 2026-04-21
  • Decision: Every bundled theme must pass a WCAG-AA contrast check on its canonical token pairs (text/background, link/background, focus-ring/background) at test time. ci/test_a11y.sh runs the gate; CI fails on regressions.
  • Rationale: Themes drift under "looks nicer" tweaks; contrast regressions land silently. Running the gate on every PR is the cheapest insurance. Ran the gate on initial themes — caught one summer-night muted token at 2.81:1 (below AA), fixed before landing.
  • Cost: Third-party themes (Tier 6) won't be gated until an extension-time test hook lands. Bundled themes are gated today.
  • Raised by: 2026-04-21 planning.