Re: Focus indicators for grouped controls

Answered just now on Twitter 
https://twitter.com/alastc/status/1184038420240314368 but to recap here:

your question seems to confuse/mix up visual indication of focus and 
where the actual programmatic focus is? the two can be different 
(particularly for ARIA-based widgets with active descendants etc).

to be clear, behind the scenes there's that distinction between roving 
tabindex and using aria-activedescendant or similar. in some patterns, 
it seems a matter of personal taste/preference which one you use. in 
others (e.g. comboboxes with listboxes) it has to be latter

but regardless, from the point of view of visual indication of focus, it 
doesn't matter either way. you want to have a clear visual indication of 
where "focus" is (but not necessarily "focus" in the programmatic sense, 
more in the abstract "what is focused/selected/highlighted")

saying that "keyboard focus indicator" needs to follow just what the 
programmatic focus actually is would be very naive. it's more about the 
more abstract concept of "what's focused/selected/highlighted", and 
THAT's what's important

not the mechanistic "what's the  document.activeElement" per se

P
-- 
Patrick H. Lauke

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Received on Tuesday, 15 October 2019 09:44:44 UTC