Accessibility statement

1. Our commitment

This statement covers the website baku.care, including the gift shop, the Baku app for iOS and Android, and the emails we send. It is published by BSNS GmbH, a limited liability company under Swiss law, Birkenstrasse 47, 6343 Rotkreuz, Switzerland, UID CHE-213.120.212 ("Baku", "we", "us").

Our target for all three is WCAG 2.2 level AA, the level the European standard EN 301 549 builds on. Accessibility is part of how we design Baku, not something added afterwards. The rules Baku follows at night, such as few choices, large buttons and short text, also help anyone who is tired, distressed or half awake.

2. What we have built in

In the app

• Text size. Baku follows the text size you set on your phone (Dynamic Type on iPhone, font size on Android). Body text grows up to 1.8 times its normal size; large display titles grow up to 1.3 times, so that they still fit on the screen.
• Reduce Motion. When Reduce Motion is on, movement is replaced by gentle fades, for example when a gift card opens.
• Screen readers. Buttons and controls carry labels for VoiceOver and TalkBack. The moon calendar has a spoken summary.
• Contrast. Our colour pairs are well above the WCAG AA minimum of 4.5:1 for normal text: Paper on Ink 16.6:1, Periwinkle on Ink 9.1:1, and secondary text 7.1:1. In Nightlight, the 3 a.m. mode, Ember text on black reaches about 6.7:1.
• Not colour alone. Night labels always pair a moon symbol with a word, so meaning never depends on colour.
• Large touch targets. Controls are at least 44 points; after dusk, buttons are at least 64 points, and in Nightlight at least 88 points, so they can be found with sleepy hands.
• Touch you can feel. In Nightlight, breathing is guided by gentle vibration you can follow with your eyes closed. You can turn vibration down or off in Settings.
• Speak or type. Wherever you can speak an entry, you can type it instead.
• Calm at night. After lights out and in Nightlight, a screen offers at most three actions, needs no scrolling and shows no more than two lines of text. Nightlight works offline.
• Languages. The app is available in English and German.

On the website

• Keyboard. Everything works with a keyboard except drawing a signature (see section 3), focus is always visible, and a skip link leads straight to the content.
• Structure. Each page has one main heading and no skipped heading levels, and every link and button has a name.
• Images. Images that carry information have text alternatives. Decorative scenes are hidden from screen readers.
• Motion. Animations respect your system's reduced-motion setting.
• Touch targets. Every control is at least 24 by 24 pixels, as WCAG 2.2 asks, except links inside a sentence.
• Forms. Fields in the gift composer have labels, errors are announced, and the drawn signature is optional.
• Nightlight colours. Where the website shows Nightlight, its dim text is lifted to a contrast of 4.6:1.

In our emails

Every email states its language for screen readers, comes with a plain-text version, gives images a text alternative and keeps its words as real text.

3. Known limitations

We prefer to be honest about what does not work well yet:

• Scene images are decorative. The night skies and landscapes behind our screens are hidden from screen readers and not described. They carry no information, but people who cannot see them miss the atmosphere they add.
• No transcripts for audio sessions yet. The guided sessions (body scan, cyclic sighing and back to sleep) have no transcript in the app. Until they do, we send you the text of any session on request.
• The Guide answers in text only. Screen readers read the Guide's answers, but there is no built-in spoken version, and the app does not read your own entries aloud.
• Voice entries depend on your phone. Speaking an entry uses your phone's own speech recognition, which does not work equally well for every voice or language. Typing always works.
• Text stops growing at a limit. At the largest accessibility text sizes, our text stops growing at the limits in section 2, earlier than your phone would allow. The labels in the tab bar grow up to 1.2 times.
• Gift cards keep a fixed size. The words on a gift card are drawn at a fixed size, so that the card looks as the giver designed it; they do not grow with your text size setting. The handwritten style can be harder to read than the typeset one, which the giver can choose instead.
• The drawn signature needs touch or a mouse. Signing a gift by hand cannot be done with a keyboard. It is optional, and your typed name works without it.
• Nightlight is dim on purpose. To protect sleep, secondary text in Nightlight has a lower contrast of about 3.2:1: enough for large text, but below WCAG AA for small text. Main text and buttons meet AA. Nightlight also fades to black after 10 seconds without a touch; a tap brings it back.
• Gift pages are still being tested with screen readers. The gift composer and the page where a gift is opened have passed our automated checks, but we are still completing tests with VoiceOver.
• Other providers' pages. Payment on the website takes place on Stripe's checkout page, and in-app purchases in the App Store or Google Play. Their accessibility is their responsibility.
• Languages. Baku is available in English and German only. We do not yet offer sign language or easy-to-read versions.

4. How we test

• Website: automated checks on every page in our sitemap, at phone and desktop widths, by day and by night: text alternatives, names of links and buttons, heading order, duplicate ids and the size of touch targets. We also run Lighthouse accessibility audits, which scored 100 on our main pages at the last check, and test pages with the keyboard.
• App: we go through the main flows with VoiceOver on iPhone and TalkBack on Android, with Reduce Motion on and at the largest text sizes, in the day and night themes and in Nightlight.
• Colours: contrast is calculated from our design tokens, so every theme uses tested colour pairs.

We repeat these checks before major releases and review this statement at least once a year.

5. The European Accessibility Act

The European Accessibility Act (Directive (EU) 2019/882) has applied since 28 June 2025. It is implemented in Germany by the Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz (BFSG) and in Austria by the Barrierefreiheitsgesetz (BaFG). Among other things, it covers e-commerce services: selling to consumers at a distance through websites and apps, such as our gift shop on baku.care.

Micro-enterprises that provide services, meaning businesses with fewer than 10 employees and an annual turnover or balance sheet total of no more than EUR 2 million, are exempt from these requirements, and this exemption may apply to us. We aim to meet the requirements anyway. This statement also describes how our services meet them, as the Act asks service providers to do.

Outside the European Union we follow the same standard. In Switzerland, the Disability Discrimination Act protects people with disabilities from discrimination by private service providers; in the United Kingdom, the Equality Act 2010; and in the United States, the Americans with Disabilities Act.

6. Feedback and contact

If something in Baku is hard or impossible for you to use, please tell us. Write to support@baku.care with the subject "Accessibility", or to our postal address in section 1. It helps if you tell us:

• the page, screen or email concerned;
• your device, operating system and browser or app version;
• any assistive technology you use, such as a screen reader;
• what happened, and what you expected.

We answer within 10 working days and tell you what we will do and by when. If we cannot remove a barrier quickly, we give you the information or service another way, for example the text of an audio session, or a form completed with you by email.

7. If you are not satisfied

If our answer does not resolve your problem, you can contact the national authority responsible for accessibility in your country. In Germany this is the market surveillance authority of the federal states for the accessibility of products and services (Marktüberwachungsstelle der Länder für die Barrierefreiheit von Produkten und Dienstleistungen, MLBF); in Austria, the Sozialministeriumservice; in other EU countries, the authority designated under the European Accessibility Act. Your other rights, including the right to go to court, are not affected.

8. About this statement

We prepared this statement on 20 October 2026, based on our own assessment of the website, the app and our emails. We update it whenever we make a change that affects accessibility, and review it at least once a year.