Accessibility

Our commitment

Accessibility is part of how we build Xwork, not an afterthought. We want every client and freelancer — including people who are blind or have low vision, who are deaf or hard of hearing, who have motor or cognitive differences, or who simply prefer the keyboard — to be able to find work, hire talent, message, and get paid without barriers.

We aim to align with the internationally recognised Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at Level AA as our working standard, and we treat accessibility issues as real bugs to be fixed, not optional polish.

What we build in

Keyboard navigation: you can reach and operate the things you need — menus, forms, job applications, messaging — using the keyboard alone, with a visible focus indicator so you always know where you are.

Screen-reader support: we use meaningful headings, labels on form fields and icon buttons, and descriptive link text so screen readers can announce the page clearly.

Readable design: we work toward sufficient colour contrast, text that can be resized or zoomed without breaking the layout, and a responsive design that adapts from large monitors down to phones.

Respecting your settings: where possible we honour your system and browser preferences, such as reduced motion and larger text.

Areas we're still improving

We're an actively developing product, and some areas are further along than others. We're working through an accessibility pass across the whole app — starting with the highest-traffic pages like the dashboards, profiles, the job feed and messaging — and tightening labels, contrast and keyboard flows as we go.

If part of the Site doesn't yet meet the standard above, that's a gap we want to close, not the experience we're aiming for.

Tips for the best experience

Most modern browsers let you zoom with Ctrl/Cmd and the plus key, switch on a high-contrast or dark theme, and enable a built-in screen reader (VoiceOver on Mac/iOS, Narrator on Windows, TalkBack on Android). Xwork also includes its own light and dark themes in your settings.

The standard we measure against

Our working standard is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at Level AA, published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and referenced by accessibility laws around the world — including the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 508 in the United States, the European Accessibility Act and EN 301 549 in the EU, and equivalent frameworks elsewhere.

WCAG is organised around four principles: content should be Perceivable (you can perceive it, whatever your senses), Operable (you can operate it, whatever your input method), Understandable (it behaves predictably and clearly), and Robust (it works with current and future assistive technologies). We use these principles as the yardstick for new features and for fixing existing ones.

Assistive technologies we aim to support

We design and test with the assistive technologies people actually use: screen readers such as VoiceOver (macOS and iOS), Narrator (Windows), NVDA and JAWS (Windows), and TalkBack (Android); full keyboard-only navigation; browser and operating-system zoom and text scaling; high-contrast and dark modes; and voice-control and switch-access tools.

If you rely on an assistive technology we haven't named and something doesn't work as it should, that's exactly the kind of report we want — it helps us broaden the range of tools we test against.

Known limitations and honesty about gaps

Xwork is an actively developing product, and we'd rather be honest than overstate. Some newer or complex interfaces — rich text editing, certain drag-based interactions, live-updating areas such as messaging, and some data-dense tables — may not yet fully meet Level AA in every case.

Where a part of the Site doesn't meet the standard, we treat that as a defect to be fixed, not the intended experience. We prioritise fixes by how much they affect people's ability to do the core things: find work, hire, communicate, and get paid.

How we test and keep it from regressing

Accessibility isn't a one-time audit for us. We combine automated checks during development with manual keyboard and screen-reader testing on the highest-traffic flows, and we fold accessibility into how we review new work so that fixes don't quietly regress later.

As the product grows, our aim is to widen this coverage steadily rather than declare the job finished — accessibility is maintained, not completed.

Requesting help or an accommodation

If an accessibility barrier is preventing you from doing something important on Xwork — applying to a job, responding to a client, managing a contract or withdrawing your earnings — contact us through Help & support and tell us what you were trying to do. We will work with you to find a way to complete the task while we fix the underlying issue.

If you need information from the Site in a different format, let us know and we'll do our best to provide a suitable alternative.

Tell us about a barrier

If you hit an accessibility barrier anywhere on Xwork, please tell us through Help & support and describe what happened, the page you were on, and the device or assistive technology you were using. We aim to acknowledge accessibility reports quickly and to keep you updated as we work on a fix. Reports like these go straight onto our fix list and directly shape what we improve next — thank you for helping us make Xwork work for everyone.