Regarding acceptance criteria nr 5:

I've been digging into how the audio recordings are stored locally before the user hits "Publish", and here's what I found.
The recordings never touch the disk or any persistent browser storage like localStorage. Instead, they live entirely in the browser's RAM via Pinia, that is a state management library for Vue that lets components share data with each other while the app is running. Each recording is stored as a Blob object (audio/wav), keyed by the word's ID, in a store called recordwizard.

This means the storage is completely volatile, meaning if the user refreshes the page or closes the tab before publishing, the recordings are gone.
The files only get saved permanently once the user clicks "Publish" in the Review step.

After reviewing the current implementation, I suggest that AC (Acceptance Criteria) 1, 2, and 4 are already fulfilled:

• AC 1 & 2 - The UI already has a start/stop button that lets the user manually start and stop recording.
• AC 4 - Recording state is already indicated visually: grey bars and a "Start recording" button when ready, green animated bars and a "Stop" button while recording, and a checkmark on each word once done.

The remaining work is AC 3, which is giving the user the option to turn off automatic voice detection and control start/stop manually instead.

In T427490#12057608, @Viktoria_Hillerud_WMSE wrote:

• AC 4 - Recording state is already indicated visually: grey bars and a "Start recording" button when ready, green animated bars and a "Stop" button while recording, and a checkmark on each word once done.

I don't think we should rely on the volume meter to indicate state. Firstly it's not clear what it actually is if you don't already know that. For instance it could very well be mistaken for a progress bar. Especially since it has numbers next to it for current and total recordings.

It also doesn't change when you press "Start recording". That only happens when audio is recorded (at high enough volume).

Good catch, and it actually points at the same underlying issue as WCAG 1.4.1 (Use of Color) - information can't be conveyed by color alone.

This is an example (from PenPot) from what it could look like:

We discussed on having the same color as "Start recording" since it is the next step that is expected: