Welcome to Comfort Commons
What This Place Is About
Comfort Commons is an open-source community creating tools that make the web more comfortable and accessible for real people with real needs. We're developers, designers, researchers, and advocates who believe the internet should feel good to use—not just technically compliant.
Our big question:
Can we build a web that puts users in control of their own comfort and needs?
We think so. And we're building the tools to make it happen.
Why We Built This Community
Most accessibility work feels heavy—full of legal requirements, technical standards, and guilt about "excluding people." That approach burns everyone out and doesn't actually help users much.
We tried something different: What if contributing to accessibility felt like play? What if it was about becoming kinder to ourselves while learning to see beyond our own needs?
Turns out, when people feel safe and curious instead of judged and overwhelmed, they build better solutions. Who knew? 🎭
The RPG System: How We Play Together
We use playful metaphors—like RPGs—not to be childish, but to make space for imagination, safety, and belonging in open source work.
🦉 Animals = Your Superpowers (Perspectives, Senses, Needs)
Pick a creature that represents your perspective, your needs, or just what feels right:
- 🦉 Owls: See details others miss, care about visual clarity and contrast
- 🐬 Dolphins: Hear what others might not, tune the world for clear sound and calm
- 🦌 Deer: Move gently, know the best paths, care about easy navigation
- 🦊 Foxes: Clever problem-solvers, make things simple for minds that work differently
- 🐻 Bears: Know when the world is too much, create cozy, calm spaces
- 🐙 Octopuses: Adaptable, embrace many ways of thinking, connect lots of ideas
Your animal isn't your "problem"—it's your superpower, your way of seeing the world that others might miss.
⚔️ Roles = How You Want to Help (No One's Stuck in Just One!)
- 🧙 Mages: Research and discover, turn findings into practical wisdom
- ⚔️ Warriors: Build and fix, turn ideas into working tools that protect users
- 📜 Sages: Write and explain, keep knowledge alive and accessible
- 🎨 Artisans: Design beautiful, usable experiences
- 🏹 Rangers: Explore and test, report what works in the wild
- 💚 Healers: Care for people, keep spaces kind, help when things get rough
Mix, match, switch roles, or invent new ones. This is your journey.
What We're Building
🎨 CM-Colors
Our first working tool
Takes your beautiful color choices and makes tiny tweaks so everyone can read your content. Changes so small you won't notice, but your users (and accessibility scores) will love you.
Current adventure: Researching how to balance high contrast requirements with vestibular comfort—turns out "accessible" colors can sometimes trigger dizziness. We're finding the sweet spot.
🔬 Active Research Expeditions
- Vestibular disorders and color sensitivity (sparked by Reddit community feedback)
- Developer barriers to accessibility adoption
- Cross-cultural color perception
- Performance impact of real-time accessibility adjustments
How Our Community Works
Real problems drive everything we build. Someone shares a struggle, we research it together, build tools that help, test with real people, and improve based on what actually works.
It looks like this:
No gatekeeping. Academic research informs our work, but we translate everything into plain language. If you need a PhD to understand our docs, we've failed.
Ethics first. We protect everyone's privacy and dignity. No one gets labeled, studied, or exposed without explicit consent. Read our full ethics approach →
Ready to Join Our Commons?
🗺️ New to Open Source?
- Browse our Current Expeditions to see what adventures are available
- Try CM-Colors to see what we're about
- Pick your animal and role—there's no wrong choice!
🧙 Want to Research?
- Check our Research Playground for guidelines and templates
- Look for issues tagged "research expedition" or "good first quest"
- Your lived experience matters more than academic credentials
⚔️ Ready to Code?
- Browse open issues in our tool repositories
- Check our Technical Setup Guide
- Jump into development discussions
🎨 Designer or Decision Maker?
- Test our tools and tell us what breaks (or works great!)
- Help us understand real-world design constraints
- Connect us with users who could benefit
Community Guidelines: Our Commons Code
Be kind to yourself first. You can't pour from an empty cup. Take breaks, ask questions, change your mind.
Embrace different perspectives. Every animal in our forest sees something others miss. That's the point.
Build together, not alone. Collaboration beats competition every time.
Privacy and dignity for all. We protect everyone who makes this work possible.
Progress over perfection. Sandcastles sometimes fall down. We build better ones next time.
Questions? Need Help?
Drop into any GitHub issue, start a discussion, or reach out to maintainers. We're here to help and always excited to meet new forest friends.
Your comfort matters. Your perspective matters. Your contributions matter.
Let's build a more comfortable web together, one kind contribution at a time.
Making the web softer for everyone, through play, research, and really good tools 🌊✨