Built to be used your way

Everything you can press is a real button or link, so Tab moves through the page and Enter or Space activates things. Every control shows a visible focus ring, and pages with a long body have a "Skip to content" link as the first stop. Nothing on the site works only on hover.

Pages are built with headings and landmarks in order, form fields carry labels, and feedback in the games and trainers is announced as it happens, without interrupting what you are doing.

The honest state: every release carries a VoiceOver walkthrough checklist on the Mac, and the site is machine checked for focus order, labels and live regions. NVDA on Windows has not been tested yet; it is on our list, and we treat it as a known gap. If your reader trips over something, tell us and we will fix that spot first.

HearMandarin is ear-first, but nothing is audio-only. Every word shows its characters, pinyin, and English meaning. The graded readers are text you can read with or without the sound. In the survival scenes, every line you hear is also written on the page in characters with pinyin and plain English, and the pinyin line has its own switch.

HearMandarin is ear-first, so here is exactly when sound starts without a press. In the study mode of the word lists, each word plays once when its card appears. In the placement, in Review, in Fix, in the test bank, and in the listening games of the practice room, each question plays its audio once as soon as it appears, because hearing it is the exercise. In all of these places a play button stays on the page, so you can hear any word again as often as you like. There is no switch to turn this off yet; if sound starting by itself gets in your way, tell us on the support page and we will fix that spot first.

Everything else waits for you: single words, reader sentences, scene lines, and every recording start only when you press a play button. Feedback sounds and background music each have an on/off switch in the settings, and background music stays off until you turn it on. Every piece of feedback is also shown as text or a visible mark, so sound is never the only channel.

If your system is set to reduce motion, the site respects it: entrance animations and decorative movement switch off, and pages simply appear. Nothing you need to see is hidden by that.

If any part of the site gets in your way, with any assistive tool, write to support@hearmandarin.com or use the support page. A real person reads it, and accessibility reports go to the front of the line.