The Lattice · Accessibility
Every hand reaches differently.
The Lattice is a visual, musical instrument — and it is built so that keyboard, screen reader, and reduced-motion visitors can still enter it. The Index lens is the text-first path through every record, and these pages carry the same facts as the canvases.
01Keyboard
The whole instrument plays from the keyboard:
| Keys | Action |
|---|---|
| ⌘K / Ctrl+K | search palette — every handshake, fuzzy-matched; ↑↓ to move, Enter to open |
| ← → | Sphere: cycle through visible pulses · River: scrub time ±50 years (Shift for ×10) |
| Enter | open the focused handshake (Sphere) |
| 1 2 3 | Sphere zoom: cosmic · regional · intimate |
| Space | play / pause the melody |
| N / P | next / previous track |
| S / R | shuffle / repeat-one |
| F | fullscreen |
| E | export the current lens as a PNG |
| D | clear the domain filter (Sphere) |
| Esc | close panels and overlays |
02Screen readers
Each canvas lens carries role="img" with a description of what it draws. The handshake panel is a proper dialog — focus moves in when it opens and returns when it closes. Lens changes are announced through a polite live region, a skip link jumps directly to the panel, and the Index lens presents every handshake as real, filterable text — year, parties, domain — rather than pixels.
03Motion
The Lattice honors prefers-reduced-motion: the sphere stops auto-rotating, and CSS transitions quiet down. Nothing in the lattice flashes; near-miss phantoms fade rather than strobe. Motion is texture here, never information — nothing is communicated only by movement.
04Sound
Sound is off until you turn it on. The player offers a volume slider, and every transport control — play, next, previous, shuffle, repeat — is a labeled button as well as a key. No information is carried by audio alone; the Song lens is a way of feeling the lattice, not the only way of reading it.
05Contrast & type
The palette is warm off-white (#e8e6df) on near-black (#07070a) — body text carries roughly a 15:1 contrast ratio. Labels use a monospace face at generous letter spacing; body copy is a light serif at readable sizes. Pure black and pure white are never used.
06Known limits, honest ones
The canvas lenses — and the Brass chamber's knobs — are inherently graphical: a screen reader gets their description, not their choreography. The equivalents are the Index lens, the search palette, and the written methodology. If something here shuts you out, the lattice wants to know — it was built by one person, and one person can fix it quickly.
Reviewed 2026-07-18 · The Lattice v0.3