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Accessibility Statement

Life on Planetsis committed to ensuring digital accessibility for people with disabilities — everyone should be able to find the music, the shows, and the writing here. Accessibility is implemented natively in the site itself: we do not rely on an accessibility overlay widget.

Conformance Status

This website targets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at Level AA. As of August 19, 2026, every public page was assessed with automated testing and an internal manual audit and found to conform: zero WCAG violations across all 13 public routes (302 individual rule checks) and a perfect Lighthouse accessibility score of 100 on every route tested. Automated testing cannot catch everything, so we treat this as evidence of conformance, not proof — see Testing, and Known Limitations.

How This Site Was Tested

Last full audit: August 19, 2026. Methods used:

  • axe-core 4.13 (via @axe-core/cli) against every public route, using the WCAG 2.0/2.1 Level A and AA rule sets — 0 violations
  • Lighthouse accessibility audits, 3 runs per route — score 100 on all routes, enforced as a release gate (minimum 95)
  • A dedicated color-contrast sweep, including mathematical verification of the design palette with the WCAG relative-luminance formula
  • Manual keyboard audit: skip links, menu and modal focus traps with focus return, carousel controls, forms, and collapsed regions
  • Reduced-motion audit: all animation (including JavaScript-driven smooth scrolling and text effects) disables under prefers-reduced-motion
  • Zoom and small-viewport checks at 200% zoom and 320px width

Measures We Take

  • Skip links to main content, navigation, and footer on every page
  • Semantic landmarks and a navigable heading hierarchy on every page
  • ARIA names, roles, and states on all custom controls, including the searchable dropdowns and menu
  • Full keyboard operability: focus-trapped dialogs that return focus on close, Escape to dismiss, and a pause control on the auto-advancing homepage carousel
  • Visible focus indicators everywhere, tuned separately for dark and light surfaces
  • Color contrast at or above 4.5:1 for text (3:1 for interface graphics), verified mathematically and by automated sweeps
  • Form fields with accessible names, autocomplete attributes, and error/success messages announced to screen readers
  • Alternative text policy: informative images are described; images that duplicate adjacent text are marked decorative so screen readers hear things once
  • Route announcements for screen readers during client-side navigation
  • honored across CSS and JavaScript animation, including smooth scrolling prefers-reduced-motion
  • Automated regression gates: axe-core and Lighthouse accessibility runs are part of the release checklist, with an internal remediation log

Known Limitations

We disclose what does not yet meet the bar, and what we do about it:

  • Embedded players (Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube) are third-party interfaces whose internals we cannot restyle or repair; some do not fully meet contrast or naming requirements internally. Mitigation: every embed is titled, and direct links to each platform are provided alongside, so no content is reachable only through an embed.
  • Music videos play through YouTube, where YouTube's captioning applies. The site's own fallback video player does not yet provide caption tracks; this is on our remediation log. Background and hover clips on this site are muted and decorative, so no information is conveyed by their audio.
  • Assistive-technology user testing (full screen-reader walkthroughs with NVDA/JAWS users) has not yet been performed; VoiceOver spot checks are part of our audit and fuller AT testing is planned.

Compatibility

This website is designed to be compatible with the following assistive technologies:

  • Screen readers (NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver)
  • Screen magnification software
  • Speech recognition software
  • Keyboard-only navigation

Feedback

We welcome your feedback on the accessibility of this website. If you encounter an accessibility barrier, please tell us — reports go into our remediation log and get fixed, not filed:

Response Time

We respond to accessibility feedback within 2 business days.

Review Schedule

Automated accessibility gates run before every release. A full audit (automated plus manual keyboard, motion, and zoom passes) is repeated quarterly and after any significant redesign. This statement was last updated on August 19, 2026.

Technical Specifications

This website relies on the following technologies to work with your browser and any assistive technologies or plugins installed on your computer:

  • HTML
  • WAI-ARIA
  • CSS
  • JavaScript