lazy_ally 1.0.0

Make your Flutter app accessible with one widget: system-aware theming, IBM color-blind-safe support, reduce-motion, and screen-reader announcements, using stock Flutter only.

[lazy_ally banner]

🍊 lazy_ally

lazy_ally makes your Flutter app accessible with one widget. It handles system-aware theming, color-blind support, reduce-motion, and screen-reader announcements, using only stock Flutter.

Status: early / pre-release (0.1.0-dev). See CHANGELOG.md.

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Features

• Pure Flutter, zero extra dependencies. lazy_ally uses only stock ThemeData, ChangeNotifier, and InheritedNotifier. It does not replace MaterialApp, bundle fonts, or add a state-management package.
• Live system theming. lazy_ally syncs system/light/dark mode to the OS continuously, not only at launch.
• Color-blind safe by default. lazy_ally uses the IBM color-blind-safe palette out of the box. The palette is contrast-correct and independent of brightness, so a color-blind user keeps their light/dark preference.
• Named custom themes and color schemes. Two independent, open-ended registries let you swap the whole ThemeData or just the ColorScheme. Both resolve live against the active brightness.
• Text scale that respects the OS. lazy_ally seeds text scale from the system's own text scaler and composes with it. It does not silently override a user's accessibility setting.
• Reduce-motion aware controls. Under reduce-motion, built-in widgets swap to simple, non-animated alternatives, not a toned-down version of the same animation.
• Screen-reader announcements. Every interactive widget announces its own state changes through SemanticsService, out of the box.
• Ready for translation. You can override every string through one LazyAllyLabels object. lazy_ally does not need an intl/Locale dependency.
• Pluggable persistence. Bring your own storage through plain loadLazyAllyPreferences/ onLazyAllyPreferencesChanged hooks. A documented pattern avoids a flash on startup.
• Well tested. 44 package tests and 16 example/widget tests run in CI on every push.

[lazy_ally demo]

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What "lazy" means here

lazy (adj.)

I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.

— Bill Gates… or Steve Jobs… definitely not Mark

A lazy_ally widget is lazy in the way a seatbelt is lazy. We measure that by what you do not have to build: the harder the accessibility problem, the easier the implementation and developer experience need to be.

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Why

• Most Flutter apps wire the same three things by hand: a light/dark theme switch, a way to keep text size adjustable, and some form of reduced-motion support.
• Accessibility-minded work often takes a back seat to domain-specific features and shipping deadlines.
• Apps solve the same accessibility problems again and again.
• We saw a need for a Flutter-native, low-maintenance interface that uses only ThemeData, ChangeNotifier, InheritedNotifier, and BuildContext. These are the same primitives you would reach for if you built it yourself and had the time.

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Install

dependencies:
  lazy_ally: ^0.1.0

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How lazy is lazy?

Ranked by how much work each one saves you. The harder the problem, the lazier the fix.

Dynamic brightness, text scale, and color-blind support — not lazy at all 🤧

runApp(LazyAlly(light: myLightTheme, dark: myDarkTheme, child: const MyApp()));

The whole accessible settings surface — extremely lazy 🥱

void main() => runApp(
      LazyAlly(
        light: myLightTheme,
        dark: myDarkTheme,
        loadLazyAllyPreferences: _loadCache,                       // persistence, your choice of storage
        onLazyAllyPreferencesChanged: _saveCache,
        child: const MyApp(),
      ),
    );

class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
  const MyApp({super.key});

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return MaterialApp(
      theme: context.lazyAllyTheme,
      home: Scaffold(
        floatingActionButton: FloatingActionButton(
          onPressed: () => showModalBottomSheet<void>(
            context: context,
            builder: (_) => const LazyAllyPanel(),
          ),
          child: const Icon(Icons.accessibility_new),
        ),
        // ...
      ),
    );
  }
}

This gives you brightness, text scale, color-blind, and reduce-motion support: live, persisted, announced, and translatable, behind one button. See the full runnable version in example/.

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Usage

import 'dart:async';
import 'dart:developer';

import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
import 'package:lazy_ally/lazy_ally.dart';

void main() => runZonedGuarded(
  () async {
    WidgetsFlutterBinding.ensureInitialized();

    // Prefetch before runApp so loadLazyAllyPreferences below returns an
    // already-known value instead of a Future. LazyAlly then applies the
    // value in initState, before the first frame, with no flash of
    // constructor defaults. This is the recommended pattern. A
    // Future-returning loadLazyAllyPreferences still works, but it cannot
    // avoid that flash.
    final LazyAllyPreferences? cachedPrefs = await readCachedLazyAllyPreferences();

    runApp(
      LazyAlly(
        light: myLightTheme,
        dark: myDarkTheme,
        // Optional — everything below has a reasonable default.
        colorBlindScheme: (light: /* ... */, dark: /* ... */),
        customColorSchemes: <String, LazyAllyColorSchemePair>{ /* ... */ },
        initialCustomScheme: 'pride',
        customThemes: <String, LazyAllyThemePair>{ /* ... */ },
        initialCustomTheme: 'mango',
        textScaleMin: 0.85,
        textScaleMax: 1.6,
        textScaleDefault: 1.0,
        initialMode: kLazyAllySystem,
        initialColorBlind: false,
        initiallyDisableAnimation: false,
        loadLazyAllyPreferences: () => cachedPrefs,
        onLazyAllyPreferencesChanged: (LazyAllyPreferences prefs) => /* ... */,
        child: const MyApp(),
      ),
    );
  },
  // runZonedGuarded catches errors thrown asynchronously (for example,
  // during the prefetch above) that would otherwise crash silently before
  // runApp.
  (Object error, StackTrace stackTrace) => log('$error:\n$stackTrace'),
);

class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
  const MyApp({super.key});

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    // Works because MyApp.build's context is already a descendant of the
    // LazyAllyProvider that LazyAlly installs above it.
    return MaterialApp(
      theme: context.lazyAllyTheme,
      home: const HomePage(),
    );
  }
}

Read and change settings anywhere below LazyAlly via context.lazyAlly:

final LazyAllyController ally = context.lazyAlly;
ally.setMode(kLazyAllyDark);       // kLazyAllySystem | kLazyAllyLight | kLazyAllyDark
ally.setColorBlind(true);
ally.setTextScaleFactor(1.2);      // clamped to [textScaleMin, textScaleMax]

kLazyAllySystem is the default mode. It tracks the OS's live platform brightness continuously. There is no built-in "extra dark" mode. Register a variant like that as a named customThemes entry instead. See TROUBLESHOOTING.md.

Control widgets

LazyAllyBrightnessSelector, LazyAllyTextScaleSlider, LazyAllyColorBlindSwitch, and LazyAllyReduceMotionSwitch read and write context.lazyAlly directly. Drop them anywhere below LazyAlly. LazyAllyPanel is a pre-composed column of the first four, meant for a showModalBottomSheet/dialog/settings-page that you build and manage yourself. LazyAlly stays out of navigation decisions:

showModalBottomSheet<void>(
  context: context,
  showDragHandle: true,
  builder: (_) => const LazyAllyPanel(
    // Defaults to true — set to false if your app is not ready to expose
    // reduce motion yet. The rest of the panel is unaffected.
    showReduceMotion: false,
  ),
);

Reduce-motion-aware content

For your own widgets that need to swap to a static-but-still-communicative alternative under reduce-motion, use LazyAllyReducedMotionBuilder instead of wiring up your own ValueListenableBuilder<bool>. It needs no extra state to manage and no AnimationController to start or stop:

LazyAllyReducedMotionBuilder(
  motionChild: const CircularProgressIndicator(),
  reducedMotionChild: const Text('Loading…'),
)

If you need the current reduceMotion value itself, use a ValueListenableBuilder<bool> on context.lazyAlly.reduceMotionListenable directly instead. This is most useful for starting or stopping an AnimationController you own, so it does not keep ticking invisibly behind whichever child is not shown. See example/lib/widgets/motion_examples.dart for worked examples of both.

Non-English apps

Every LazyAlly widget defaults to English copy but accepts a labels: LazyAllyLabels override: chip labels, switch titles/subtitles, panel headings, and the accessibility announcements each widget sends. It is a plain data class, not a localization framework. Build one from your own AppLocalizations/ARB-generated strings and pass it to LazyAllyPanel (which forwards it to every control it renders) or to an atomic widget directly. See the LazyAllyLabels dartdoc for every field.

Accessibility announcements

Every interactive LazyAlly widget calls lazyAllyAnnounce (through SemanticsService.sendAnnouncement) on state change, since selecting a new chip/switch value does not itself generate a spoken confirmation. lazyAllyAnnounce is exported so your own custom controls (for example, a bespoke itemBuilder) can match the same standard.

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Common gotchas

This is the short version. See TROUBLESHOOTING.md for the full explanation and fix for each:

• First-frame flash on startup with an async loadLazyAllyPreferences
• Reduce motion does not stop everything from animating
• A Switch/Slider-based control keeps animating regardless
• Settings changed inside a bottom sheet/dialog do not repaint
• Your own MediaQuery(builder: ...) shadows LazyAlly's

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Design decisions

• Color-blind is a flag, not a fourth theme. Brightness (system/light/dark) and color-blind (on/off) are independent axes, so a color-blind user keeps their light/dark preference. Turning it on swaps in a full ColorScheme, not a hand-indexed color list. Named slots (primary, secondary, and others) are harder to misuse than palette[i].
• No built-in brightness variants. Only system/light/dark are built in. A variant like "extra dark" is just a named customThemes entry, the same open mechanism any other named theme uses.
• Theme/scheme overrides are light/dark pairs, resolved by the package. Correctness is yours. LazyAlly always picks the member matching the active brightness, so a selected pair never ends up mismatched. It does not inspect or "fix" either member.
• No MaterialApp replacement, no bundled font. LazyAlly wraps your app. It does not ask you to swap widgets or pay for typography you did not ask for.
• No bundled storage or localization framework. loadLazyAllyPreferences/onLazyAllyPreferencesChanged and LazyAllyLabels are plain hooks/data classes. Bring SharedPreferences/intl/whatever you already use.

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Related

If you also want dev-time accessibility auditing (contrast checks, tap-target size, missing semantics) during development, pair this with accessibility_tools. It does a different job, and the two complement each other rather than compete.

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Contact

• Bugs & feature requests: GitHub Issues
• General inquiries: lazyfruit.dev
• Email: [e-mail]

[] Maintained by LazyFruit, a public-interest Flutter studio.

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Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. This is the author's first published Dart/Flutter package. Issues, PRs, and "this API is awkward, here is why" feedback are genuinely welcome.

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License

MIT — see LICENSE.

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Made with ♥️ in North Carolina.