Applied Accessibility -14 Use tabindex to Add Keyboard Focus to an Element

 Use tabindex to Add Keyboard Focus to an Element


The HTML tabindex attribute has three distinct functions relating to an element's keyboard focus. When it's on a tag, it indicates that element can be focused on. The value (an integer that's positive, negative, or zero) determines the behavior.

Certain elements, such as links and form controls, automatically receive keyboard focus when a user tabs through a page. It's in the same order as the elements come in the HTML source markup. This same functionality can be given to other elements, such as div, span, and p, by placing a tabindex="0" attribute on them. Here's an example:

<div tabindex="0">I need keyboard focus!</div>

Note
 A negative tabindex value (typically -1) indicates that an element is focusable, but is not reachable by the keyboard. This method is generally used to bring focus to content programmatically (like when a div used for a pop-up window is activated), and is beyond the scope of these challenges


The tabindex attribute also specifies the exact tab order of elements. This is achieved when the value of the attribute is set to a positive number of 1 or higher.

Setting a tabindex="1" will bring keyboard focus to that element first. Then it cycles through the sequence of specified tabindex values (2, 3, etc.), before moving to default and tabindex="0" items.

It's important to note that when the tab order is set this way, it overrides the default order (which uses the HTML source). This may confuse users who are expecting to start navigation from the top of the page. This technique may be necessary in some circumstances, but in terms of accessibility, take care before applying it.

Here's an example:


I get keyboard focus, and I get it first!
I get keyboard focus, and I get it second!

<div tabindex="1">I get keyboard focus, and I get it first!</div>

<div tabindex="2">I get keyboard focus, and I get it second!</div>

source

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ES6 : 5 Prevent Object Mutation

As seen in the previous post declaration alone doesn't really protect your data from mutation. To ensure your data doesn't change, JavaScript provides a function Object.freeze() to prevent data mutation. Once the object is frozen, you can no longer add, update, or delete properties from it. Any attempt at changing the object will be rejected without an error. let obj = { name:"FreeCodeCamp" review:"Awesome" }; Object.freeze(obj); obj.review = "bad"; //will be ignored. Mutation not allowed obj.newProp = "Test"; // will be ignored. Mutation not allowed console.log(obj); // { name: "FreeCodeCamp", review:"Awesome"}
Read more

ES6: 1 Explore Differences Between the var and let Keywords

One of the biggest problems with declaring variables with the var keyword is that you can overwrite variable declarations without an error. var camper = 'James'; var camper = 'David'; console.log(camper); // logs 'David' As you can see in the code above, the camper variable is originally declared as James and then overridden to be David . In a small application, you might not run into this type of problem, but when your code becomes larger, you might accidentally overwrite a variable that you did not intend to overwrite. Because this behavior does not throw an error, searching and fixing bugs becomes more difficult. A new keyword called let was introduced in ES6 to solve this potential issue with the var keyword. If you were to replace var with let in the variable declarations of the code above, the result would be an error. let camper = 'James'; let camper = 'David'; // throws an error This error can be seen...
Read more

CSS Grid: Reduce Repetition Using the repeat Function

 When we used grid-template-columns and grid-template-rows to define the structure of a grid, you entered a value for each row or column you created. Lets say you want a grid with 100 rows of the same height. It isn't very practical to insert 100 values individually. Fortunately, there's a better way - by using the repeat function to specify the number of times you want your column or row to be repeated, followed by a comma and the value you want to repeat. Here's an example that would create the 100 row grid, each row at 50px tall. grid-template-rows: repeat(100, 50px); You can also repeat multiple values with the repeat function, and insert the function amongst other values when defining a grid structure. Here's what I mean: grid-template-columns: repeat(2, 1fr 50px) 20px;  this will be translated to :            grid-template-columns:1fr 50px 1fr 50px  20px;   1fr 50px is repeated t...
Read more