Workshop Keyboard Navigation

The basics

  • Tab: Move forward from link to link or to controls
  • Shift + Tab: Move backward from link to link or to controls
  • Enter: Activate links, buttons, or other interactive elements
  • Arrow: Navigate radio buttons and select boxes and scroll up and down a page
  • Spacebar: Activate radio buttons and check boxes and buttons

Note: Activate Keyboard Navigation in Mac Browsers

Good overview: Keyboard Navigation Overview on WebAIM

Focusable elements

  • a
  • button
  • input
  • textarea
  • select
  • radio button
  • checkbox

Demo: Codepen Navigate with keyboard

Visible Focus

Browsers add a visible focus to an element but some CSS resets add:outline: 0;
This makes it very hard to navigate a site.

Add :focus where you add :hover in your CSS.

Tab index

Add focus to an element:

  • tabindex: 0 gives focus to items that wouldn’t normally get focus and includes them into normal tab order
  • tabindex: -1 gives focus to items that wouldn’t normally get focus and/or removes items from the normal tab order
  • tabindex: any positive integer gives focus and overrules normal tab order

Avoid hijacking the tabindex: it makes it very hard for keyboard users to access the menu.

Hamburger menu

Use focusable elements to toggle

Modals

Close with Esc!

Demo: The Incredible Accessible Modal Window by Greg Kraus (with the code also on GitHub)

Avoid a keyboard trap