Inspiration The web is a visual-first medium, yet millions of users with visual impairments find it difficult to navigate due to poor contrast, small fonts, or confusing color schemes. We noticed that while accessibility settings exist, they are often buried deep in browser menus or OS settings. We wanted to create Octheia to act as a "one-click" accessibility hub, bridging the gap between standard web design and the individual needs of every user.
What it does Octheia is a powerful Chrome extension that empowers users to take full control of their browser's appearance.
Accessibility Presets: Instant color-blindness filters (Protanopia, Deuteranopia, Tritanopia) that shift page hues into distinguishable ranges.
Enhanced Readability: Users can select on specific words or sentences to magnify them.
Smart Contrast: Toggles between high-contrast modes and custom dark themes to reduce eye strain and improve legibility.
User-Centric Design: Eliminates the need to dig through system settings, providing a centralized control panel for all visual modifications.
How we built it We developed Octheia using a modern web stack for browser extensions:
Frontend: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the popup interface, designed with large hit zones and ARIA labels for accessibility.
Core Logic: Content scripts that dynamically inject CSS and manipulate the DOM to apply visual filters and font changes in real-time.
Challenges we ran into One of the biggest hurdles was ensuring that our visual overrides (like font scaling) didn't "break" the layout of modern, complex websites. We had to carefully craft CSS injection logic that respects a site’s existing structure while prioritizing the user's readability settings. Additionally, creating accurate color-blindness simulation filters required deep research into color science and the specific "confusion lines" of different visual conditions.
Accomplishments that we're proud of We are incredibly proud of creating a tool that actually works on the "wild west" of the internet—applying consistent accessibility rules across millions of differently coded websites. Achieving a fluid user experience where settings update instantly without a page refresh was a major technical win for us.
What we learned During this project, we learned that "accessibility" isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. A setting that helps a user with Protanopia might not be useful for someone with low visual acuity. This taught us the importance of granularity—giving the user the ability to fine-tune specific elements rather than just providing a single "on/off" switch.
What's next for Octheia Our roadmap for Octheia includes:
AI-Powered Image Descriptions: Integrating a lightweight vision model to generate alt-text for images that lack it.
Voice Commands: Allowing users to change their visual settings using simple voice triggers.
Community Presets: A library of user-created themes optimized for specific conditions or popular websites like Reddit, Wikipedia, and GitHub.
Cross-Browser Support: Expanding from Chrome to Firefox and Safari to reach more users.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.