PlasticSynth is a workshop of musical instruments, and an instrument you cannot reach is not an instrument. This page says plainly how far we have got: what we test, what passes, and — the part most statements leave out — exactly which parts of this site are still hard or impossible to use by keyboard or with a screen reader.
What we aim for
The target is WCAG 2.2 Level AA. That is a real bar rather than a slogan: it covers colour contrast, keyboard operation, visible focus, target sizes, motion, and the names and roles that assistive technology reads. Where we do not meet it, it is listed below rather than quietly omitted.
What works
- A skip link. The first thing Tab reaches on every page jumps past the header and its menus, straight to the content.
- Keyboard operation throughout. Every knob, fader and switch is a real slider control that announces its value and responds to the arrow keys, Home and End. Sequencer steps, drum cells and preset chips are ordinary buttons that report whether they are on. You can tab into any instrument, play it, and tab back out — there is nowhere the focus gets stuck.
- Visible focus, always. Every focusable thing has a focus ring, and the sticky header never covers what you have just moved to.
- Contrast. Text and interface colours meet the 4.5:1 (and 3:1 for large text and controls) thresholds, on every page and inside every device.
- Targets you can hit.Controls are at least 24 × 24 pixels, which is also why the accent strips and cell grids are chunkier than a purely visual design would make them.
- Reduced motion. If your system asks for less motion, the animations stop — including the drifting playheads and the tape-warble flourishes.
- Structure.Real headings, landmarks and lists, so a screen reader can navigate a page by structure instead of reading it end to end. Pages work at 320 pixels wide and at 200% zoom.
What doesn't — the honest list
These are known failures, not oversights we have not noticed. They are here so you can decide whether this site is worth your time before you spend it.
- The site is audio-first. The whole point is sound, and there is no visual or haptic substitute for hearing a filter open. Deaf and hard-of-hearing visitors can compose and export with the sequencers and the scope displays, but the result cannot be evaluated without hearing it.
- PS-AER Theremin needs a camera and hand movement. It tracks your hands through the webcam; there is no keyboard or pointer equivalent. If you cannot use it, the PS-20 Ribbon covers the same continuous-pitch idea and is playable with the arrow keys.
- PS-CHD Strum's strum plate is a swipe. The seven chord buttons are keyboard-operable, but the eight-string plate you swipe to arpeggiate is pointer-only. The PS-ARP Cascade arpeggiates the same chords without a gesture.
- PS-GRN Grain's scrub area is pointer-driven. Its knobs work from the keyboard, but choosing the grain position by dragging across the waveform does not.
- PS-ORB Orbit is best with a pointer.Each ring's note and speed have keyboard controls, but dragging a planet to change when it chimes does not.
- Dense grids are still dense. A 16-step, multi-row lane is a lot of tab stops. Every cell is labelled with its row and step, but we have not yet built a faster way to move around a grid.
- No captions or transcripts, because there is no speech or video anywhere on the site.
How this is tested
Every page and every instrument is scanned automatically against WCAG 2.2 A and AA on each change, and the build fails if a new violation appears. Automated tools catch roughly a third of accessibility problems — the mechanical third — so that scan is paired with keyboard walkthroughs of each instrument: tab all the way through, operate every control, and confirm the focus never gets trapped or hidden.
What we do not yet do is test with real screen-reader users. Everything above about screen readers comes from our own testing with the software, which is not the same thing as knowing it works for the people who rely on it. If that is you, we would genuinely like to hear what breaks.
Tell us what we got wrong
If something here is unreachable, mislabelled, or just miserable to use, please say so — it is a small independent project and every message is read. Email admin@plasticsynth.com or use the contact page. Describing what you were trying to do, and what your browser and assistive software were, helps more than anything else.
Accessibility problems are treated as bugs rather than requests, and fixes ship in the changelog like everything else.
Formal bits
This statement applies to plasticsynth.com and was last reviewed on 16 August 2026 against WCAG 2.2 Level AA. PlasticSynth is partially conformant: it meets Level AA except for the gestural instrument surfaces listed above, which fail 2.1.1 Keyboard and 2.5.1 Pointer Gestures. Those are limitations of specific instruments, not of the site around them — the rest of the workshop, including the Studio, the generator and every other instrument, is reachable without a pointer.