austinfarwell.com and Golden Piano

Accessibility

Published October 16, 2026. Last reviewed October 16, 2026.

I want everyone to be able to listen to, learn and buy my music here, including people who use a screen reader, a keyboard instead of a mouse, voice control, screen magnification, captions, or a "reduce motion" setting.

The standard I'm working to

I aim to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at Level AA. The site is partially conformant: some parts don't fully meet the standard yet. They're listed below with what I'm doing about each one.

What works today

You can use the site with a keyboard alone, apart from the limits listed below. Focus is visible. A skip link comes first on the home page and the sheet music pages. Menus and the checkout panel keep focus inside and close with Escape.
Pages have a clear title, headings and labelled regions. Images have text descriptions, or are marked as decorative.
The commission form and checkout have visible labels. If something is missing from either, the message is read out by screen readers.
You can zoom text to 200%, and pages fit screens as narrow as 320 pixels without scrolling sideways.
If your device is set to reduce motion, the site's own animations stop, including the moving credits on the home page.
Golden Piano: practise at 25, 50, 75 or 100% speed. Use Wait mode, where the song waits for you and there's no time pressure. Learn one hand at a time. Turn off the sound, the falling notes, the sheet music or the video of me. Play with a MIDI keyboard (in browsers that support Web MIDI, such as Chrome and Edge), your computer keys, the on-screen keys, or (beta, on a computer) an acoustic piano through your microphone; microphone audio stays on your device.
Ask me, Golden Piano's AI tutor, works with typing, and a note under the chat says its answers are AI-generated.

Known limitations, and what I'm doing about them

Falling-notes display. It's a visual animation. Screen-reader users can choose sections, hands, speed and mode, hear coaching and their score, but don't yet get note-by-note guidance while the music plays. Plan: an "Announce notes" option and a text version of each section's notes, aiming for early 2027.
Scrolling sheet music in the trainer. It's an image. You can jump between sections with the keyboard (Prev and Next, or the [ and ] keys), but not yet to a single bar. Plan: keyboard navigation bar by bar, aiming for early 2027.
The Space key in the trainer. Space plays and pauses, but it also moves keyboard focus back to the top of the page. Plan: keep focus where it was, aiming for early 2027.
Sheet music PDFs. They're printed music notation, which screen readers can't read. If you need another format, such as a MusicXML file for braille-music software or a large-print PDF, email me and I'll do my best to provide it.
Videos. My performance and tutorial videos are solo piano, without speech. The short film "The Shared Language of Music" has only automatic captions for now. Plan: reviewed captions and a transcript, aiming for early 2027.
Moving content on the home page. The scrolling list of credits and a few decorative animations keep moving, and today the only way to stop them is your device's "reduce motion" setting. Plan: a pause button, aiming for early 2027.
Third-party services. Payment forms (Stripe, PayPal), the security check on the "Lost your download?" page (Cloudflare), and embedded YouTube and Spotify players are run by other companies. If one of them stops you, email me and I'll help you finish another way, for example with an emailed payment link or by sending your files directly.
World Map. The interactive map is visual. The ranked table on the same page lists the same artists, with where they're based and their numbers, and a second table lists their tour dates.
Golden Piano with a screen reader. Some trainer buttons don't yet say whether they're on or which option is chosen, and coaching messages and scores aren't read out yet. Plan: a state and label on every control, labelled lines of sheet music and a spoken status line. These are in testing now.
Phones. On a phone held upright, the on-screen piano keys are small. Turn your phone sideways for bigger keys.

Tell me about a problem

Email austincfarwell@gmail.com with the page address and what happened, and tell me if you'd like something in another format. I run this site myself. I aim to reply within 2 business days and to fix the problem, or give you another way to get what you need, within 10 business days. If an accessibility problem stopped you from using something you bought, I'll refund it.

How I check

This statement is based on a self-assessment done in October 2026: automated testing with axe-core on the main pages, on desktop and phone sizes, plus scripted browser checks of keyboard use, focus, zoom and reflow, colour contrast, reduced motion, forms and captions, in Google Chrome. Next: testing by people using Safari, Firefox and Edge with the VoiceOver and NVDA screen readers. I review this page whenever the site changes significantly, and at least every six months.

Technical details

The site uses HTML, CSS, JavaScript and WAI-ARIA, and is built to work in current versions of Chrome, Safari, Edge and Firefox.

Statement prepared October 16, 2026. Last reviewed October 16, 2026.