Whakerexa — A minimalist and lightweight web kit for accessible contents

Overview

Whakerexa is a lightweight front-end toolkit that blends clarity, accessibility, and flexibility.
It provides a modern CSS foundation and modular JavaScript components to build interfaces that are both elegant and inclusive — with minimal code and maximum readability.

Designed around accessibility from the start, Whakerexa makes it easy to craft clean, human-friendly HTML that just works — without drowning your pages in class names or dependencies.
Every visual aspect — colors, typography, spacing, animations — is defined through CSS variables, giving you full creative control with a few redefinitions.

It pairs naturally with WhakerPy, the lightweight Python library for generating dynamic HTML, offering a seamless workflow from code to design.

Features

• ✨ Lightweight, semantic, and modular
• 🌓 Built-in light / dark themes
• 🔆 High-contrast accessibility mode
• 🎨 Fully customizable through CSS variables
• 🧩 Composable and extensible — adapt to your needs
• ⚙️ Zero dependencies, 100 % open source

Install Whakerexa

Whakerexa is a ZIP archive. You only need to unpack-it.

Quick Start

For usage examples of the CSS and JS frameworks, visit the online documentation:

👉 https://whakerexa.sourceforge.io

The HTML files available in the docs folder are also provided for offline reference,
but note that dynamic examples (those using JavaScript modules) require a web server
and will not work if opened directly from your disk (file:// protocol).

Projects using Whakerexa

Whakerexa was initially developed within SPPAS https://sppas.org. It was extracted from its original software in 2024 by the author to lead its own life as standalone tool.

Websites

It is used by the website of the "AutoCuedSpeech" project at https://auto-cuedspeech.org and the website of SPPAS https://sppas.org.

Applications

It is used by the Setup of SPPAS software tool.

Projects using Whakerexa

Whakerexa is used by "ClammingPy", a tool to create automatically Python accessible documentation https://clamming.sf.net.

Author/Copyright

Copyright (C) 2023-2025 - Brigitte Bigi, CNRS - contact@sppas.org
Laboratoire Parole et Langage, Aix-en-Provence, France.

See the AUTHORS file for the full list of contributors.

License

Whakerexa is under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3.

Support

Whakerexa was initially developed within https://auto-cuedspeech.org project, generously funded by FIRAH (Fondation Internationale de Recherche Appliquée sur le Handicap), https://www.firah.org/.
It is also developed with the support of Laboratoire Parole et Langage https://www.lpl-aix.fr.

Changes

Version 0.1

• Initial version, extracted from SPPAS 4.17.
• Added or updated, and tested JavaScripts
• Updated CSS frameworks to be more generic
• Added HTML documentation of the CSS frameworks
• Added a CSS/JS framework for playing a video in a popup dialog

Version 0.2

• Added code.css, a set of colors for highlighting source code.
• Added menu.css, a solution for an accessible responsive sticky menubar
• Added layout.css, a set of classes to easily organize HTML content
• Added accordion.js which must be added when using "rise-panel"

Version 0.3

• Changed some colors of code.css
• Added variable 'border-radius' in wexa.css
• Modified details/summary to act and look like buttons
• The "rise-panel/accordion" is deprecated (HTML-3), use HTML-5 details/summary instead
• Added modal dialogs to show an alert message: info, success, warning, error, tips, question

Version 0.4

This is mainly a bug-correction version: adjusted some width, removed transparency of
background dialogs, corrected a bug in accessibility.

Version 0.5

• Added accessibility icons
• Added upload of files in request.js
• Minor CSS changes
• Migrated license, from GPL to AGPL.

Version 0.6

• Added sortatable: a CSS/JS utility designed for sorting table rows in ascending or descending order
• Added toggleselect: CSS/JS utility for toggling checkbox states.
• Added custom buttons: introduced CSS classes text-reveal-button, action-button, apply-button and switch.
• Updated request.js: better support of upload, better error management in post.

Version 0.7

• Re-organized documentation
• Updated the switch button
• Debug of action-button
• Minor changes in wexa.css

Version 0.8

• This is mainly some debug.

Version 1.0 — stable

Version 1.0 establishes Whakerexa as a modular, object-oriented web kit centered on a unified entry point.

• Core entry point: wexa.js, which instantiates:

  1. OnLoadManager — Delayed, ordered component initialization.
  2. WexaLogger — Unified logging.
  3. AccessibilityManager — Themes and contrast.
  4. MenuManager — Navigation menus and submenus.
  5. DialogManager — Opening/closing dialogs and popup videos.

• Menus are fully re-implemented (CSS + JS). See docs/menu.html.

• Dialogs are managed by DialogManager (legacy functions replaced).
• Backward compatibility with pre-1.0 procedural APIs is limited and not fully ensured.
• Not all minor/specialized classes have been ported (e.g., Book, ToggleSelector, SortaTable).

This version also includes a set of monochrome SVG icons.