RE: Tabindex

1. Those elements that support the tabindex attribute and assign a
positive value to it are navigated first.

"0" is not a positive number.

2. Those elements that do not support the tabindex attribute or support
it and assign it a value of "0" are navigated next. These elements are
navigated in the order they appear in the character stream.

That would typically be true, but there are still issues when setting
the first element to a tabindex="0".  Navigation does not start.  I've
tested this numerous times and validators do find the tabindex="0" as an
error.  Tabindex="0" does get ignored.

Lee

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Joe Clark
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2003 5:32 PM
To: WAI-GL
Subject: Re: Tabindex



> Proposal:
> Tabindex can include any number 0 through 9 and may not exceed 32767.

> A tabindex of 0 should never be used because the 0 is read as a 
> leading 0 as in 03 or 0340.  Therefore a tabindex="0" would be 
> understood as tabindex="" where a tabindex="03" would be understood as

> tabindex="3".

That is not what the spec says. tabindex="0" is explicitly permitted as
a legal value.

<http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/interact/forms.html#adef-tabindex>
    2. Those elements that do not support the tabindex attribute or
support it and assign it a value of "0" are navigated next.  These
elements are navigated in the order they appear in the character stream.

The spec also states "User agents should ignore leading zeros."
tabindex="0" does not constitute a leading zero. It isn't leading
anything.

-- 

  Joe Clark  |  joeclark@joeclark.org
  Author, _Building Accessible Websites_
  <http://joeclark.org/access/> | <http://joeclark.org/book/>

Received on Monday, 24 March 2003 20:57:19 UTC