Accessibility

Our aim

We want this website and its story experiences to be usable by as many people as possible, including people who use a keyboard, screen reader, voice control, magnification or reduced-motion settings. We are working towards WCAG 2.2 Level AA. We have not completed a full independent accessibility audit, and the known limitations below remain part of that work.

Reading and navigation

Use Tab and Shift + Tab to move between controls, and Enter to follow links or activate buttons. A “Skip to main content” link appears when focused at the start of the main pages.

The activity pages share a LittleHeart navigation panel. It closes when you interact with the activity or scroll down, without resizing the workspace. Move the pointer to the top edge, scroll back to the top, or activate the small Explore tab labelled Open LittleHeart navigation to reopen it. Return to activity or Escape closes the panel and returns focus to that tab. Hidden navigation links are removed from the keyboard focus order. Your device’s reduced-motion setting removes the sliding transition.

On the homepage, The story opens the book’s synopsis, interactive characters, themes, reflection resources and reader downloads in one scrollable dialogue. In the character section, focus a character’s name and press Enter or Space to reveal or close their portrait and note. Use its Close button or Escape to leave it. Focus returns to the button that opened it. The separate Heart Garden link opens the garden.

You can enlarge text using your browser’s zoom controls. The main reading pages adapt to smaller screens. Garden composition and some creative canvases remain visual workspaces rather than ordinary flowing text.

Exploring the Living Gallery

The Living Gallery shows a still front view of seven framed paintings. Select a painting to open its original interactive artwork. On smaller screens, larger named painting cards beneath the room offer the same experiences.

Use Tab to reach a painting and Enter or Space to open it. The room stays in one position. Its view is not cropped when the screen changes size.

Use Back to the gallery, Close this painting or Escape to leave a painting. Focus returns to the button that opened it. When your device requests reduced motion, the artwork reduces decorative movement and silences the frog. Videos you choose to play retain their own playback and sound controls.

If the room image cannot load, named painting cards remain available. Within a painting, the loading screen waits for the essential artwork. Its visual details do not yet have a complete non-visual equivalent; named painting buttons and labelled artwork controls provide alternatives for many actions.

Heart Garden keyboard controls

Start with Build My Own Garden, Explore Ready-Made Gardens or, when progress exists, Continue My Garden. Build My Own Garden offers six empty garden styles before starting. Rest makes garden objects non-interactive and removes them from keyboard focus; Return to your garden restores the previous mode. Starting blank keeps earlier arrangements in Save → Earlier gardens. My gardens reopens the choices. Bulk emptying, removing objects, restoring a preset and smoothing all sand ask for confirmation first.

Choose Reflect in the garden menu, then select an experience. You can close its pop-up with Escape or Close this moment. Undo and reset controls are available within bonsai, sand and stones.

• Bonsai: select its scissors to open trimming. Four styles are in Plants. Use Tab to reach the leaf or twig controls. Use the arrow keys to choose another leaf or twig, then Enter or Space to trim it. Use Undo, Grow or Restore when you want to change direction.
• Sand: its attached rake enters in-garden raking, and its expand button opens the close-up. Focus the sand workspace. Press Space to lower the rake, move it with the arrow keys, then press Space again to lift it. Choose Smooth a section to use the smoothing tool in the same way.
• Stones: use Tab to focus a stone. The arrow keys lift and move it; [ and ] turn it. Press Space to release it and let it settle. The turn buttons offer another way to rotate the selected stone.
• Arranging your garden: in Garden mode, focus a placed object, pond or ground area and use the arrow keys to move it. Its corner and rotation controls also accept arrow keys. Its labelled buttons remove, mirror, copy or change its layer. Hold Shift while using arrow controls for larger adjustments.
• Moon: choose View → Light & atmosphere → Moonlight. The moon phase and size controls work with a keyboard. Position the moon focuses the moon so you can move it with arrow keys; its resize handle also accepts arrow keys.
• Rest: use Return to your garden or Escape to bring the controls back.

The garden guide can be reopened from How the garden works in the garden. On phones, tap near an edge to reveal fading controls. In Rest, tap anywhere; keyboard users can press Tab. The phone menu overlays a scene that fills the viewport in either orientation. Touch users can select an object to reveal its controls without hovering.

Sound, motion and pace

Heart Garden starts with sound off. Use Sound in the garden menu to switch it on or off and adjust the volume. The sound button within an activity uses the same garden sound setting.

Your device’s Reduce motion preference turns off decorative CSS animation and reduces bonsai clipping and growth effects. Some movement is part of the activity itself: released stones still settle, for example. Reduced motion does not pause every canvas effect.

Bonsai, sand and stone activities are open-ended. There is no score or required time limit. Breathing guidance is optional; you can stop it and close the experience whenever you wish.

Music videos load only when you choose to play them. Playback, captions and other controls depend on the video provider and the individual video.

Known limitations

Heart Garden, the Living Gallery and the colouring studio use highly visual artwork and canvas drawing. Labels and keyboard controls help with many actions, but they do not yet provide a complete non-visual equivalent of spatial arrangement, pruning shapes, sand patterns or stone balance.

Some fine details may be difficult to select on a small screen. In the bonsai experience, Closer view enlarges the tree, and keyboard leaf and twig controls provide an alternative to precise tapping.

Some embedded music and artistic animation comes from third-party or highly visual material. We provide descriptive text and controls where possible, but those external experiences may not offer the same level of accessibility as the rest of this website.

Keyboard actions and responsive layouts have been checked in a desktop browser. We have not yet completed comprehensive testing with screen readers, voice control or a range of physical mobile devices. Please tell us where the experience does not work for you.