← Heartbeat

Accessibility

Last updated 27 September 2026

Heartbeat is operated by That's the Spot Productions LLC, which does business as Heartbeat Safety. “We” and “us” in this document mean that company. We build and run Heartbeat ourselves, and every message it sends is sent by us, about our own users — never on behalf of another business.

The short version

Heartbeat is built to be fully usable with a screen reader. Not mostly usable, and not usable except for setup: a blind dog owner can set up the whole backup plan for their animal by themselves — every question, every permission, signing up, arming the monitor. That is the bar a feature has to clear before it ships, and a feature that cannot clear it does not ship.

This is not a corporate value. Some of the people this app exists for are blind, and some of them are blind owners of guide dogs — which is to say the animal the app protects is the reason they cannot see the screen. Building for them first is building for the actual customer.

What that means in practice

• Every control carries a name, a role and its state, so VoiceOver and TalkBack read a button as a button and say whether it is busy or off.
• Content that appears or changes says so. Errors are announced when they happen; moving to the next step of setup moves the reader’s focus with it and reads the new question aloud.
• Nothing vanishes on a timer while a screen reader is running. Interfaces that tidy themselves away after a few seconds are calibrated for a glance, so under a reader those clocks stop.
• Verification codes arrive by text and fill themselves in. Reading a six-digit code out of a notification and retyping it is a sighted person’s idea of easy.
• Every feature explains itself where it is. Each permission states its reason directly above the button that asks; the app’s background activity is listed in plain sentences under Insights, so you can judge the coverage for yourself instead of taking our word for it.
• Color is never the only signal, text respects the system’s type size, and the app follows your light or dark setting.

The standard we hold ourselves to

We work to the spirit and, wherever it applies to a native app, the letter of WCAG 2.2 AA, and we test the flows that matter — setup, adding contacts, checking in, the escalation settings — with VoiceOver on iOS and TalkBack on Android. We will not claim a certification we have not earned; what we claim is the practice above, and it is checkable.

When we miss

We will miss things. When we do, that is a bug with priority — not feedback, not a nice-to-have, a bug — because for some of our users an inaccessible control is the app not working at all. Tell us at support@heartbeat.pet or through the contact form, and say a screen reader is involved: accessibility reports go to the front of the queue. You will hear back from a person.

Questions about any of this: get in touch or email support@heartbeat.pet. By post: That's the Spot Productions LLC, 254 Chapman Rd, Ste 208 #26303, Newark, DE 19702.