Narrative:

We received a clearance via pre departure clearance and ACARS that stated 'climb via SID; except maintain 4000 ft'. We departed; and upon checking in with departure were told to climb via the SID. We leveled off at 4000 ft as we both believed this to be our clearance limit altitude. The departure controller queried us as to why we leveled off. We stated it was what we were cleared to. He directed us to climb to upper limit of 17;000 ft. We then continued to climb to the correct altitude.I believe that we both contributed to the occurrence/event by not seeing or omitting the 17;000 ft altitude limit in the lower right corner of the approach plate. When viewed in landscape form with an ipad; the 17;000 ft fix was not visible on the departure plate page. Scrolling down to read the bottom of the page; (which should move this critical altitude up into view) places the 17;000 ft limit behind the crayon/marker/rotate emblem in the lower right corner; again in landscape view. Also; the font and size of '17000 ft' do not lend themselves to being critical or eye catching; especially when hidden or obscured from view during viewings and briefing. There is a very small window of 1/4-3/8 of an inch in which a pilot might be able to view this critical information.move the crayon/marker/rotate function on the ipad to either the side bar or upper bar so as to be out of the field of view where it would not block or obscure critical information. Being just north of the washington dc restricted airspace fight free zone and P56; if not for an alert controller; this event could have ended poorly for all on board in the interest of national security. The controller did an excellent job of noticing and notifying us of our improper level off altitude and immediately correcting the situation.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A320 First Officer reported they failed to climb to assigned altitude on departure from BWI with usability of their iPad tablet cited as a contributing factor.

Narrative: We received a clearance via PDC and ACARS that stated 'climb via SID; except maintain 4000 ft'. We departed; and upon checking in with departure were told to climb via the SID. We leveled off at 4000 ft as we both believed this to be our clearance limit altitude. The departure controller queried us as to why we leveled off. We stated it was what we were cleared to. He directed us to climb to upper limit of 17;000 ft. We then continued to climb to the correct altitude.I believe that we both contributed to the occurrence/event by not seeing or omitting the 17;000 ft altitude limit in the lower right corner of the approach plate. When viewed in landscape form with an iPad; the 17;000 ft fix was not visible on the departure plate page. Scrolling down to read the bottom of the page; (which should move this critical altitude up into view) places the 17;000 ft limit behind the crayon/marker/rotate emblem in the lower right corner; again in landscape view. Also; the font and size of '17000 ft' do not lend themselves to being critical or eye catching; especially when hidden or obscured from view during viewings and briefing. There is a very small window of 1/4-3/8 of an inch in which a pilot might be able to view this critical information.Move the crayon/marker/rotate function on the iPad to either the side bar or upper bar so as to be out of the field of view where it would not block or obscure critical information. Being just north of the Washington DC Restricted Airspace Fight Free Zone and P56; if not for an alert controller; this event could have ended poorly for all on board in the interest of National Security. The controller did an excellent job of noticing and notifying us of our improper level off altitude and immediately correcting the situation.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.