Re: { quick question } visual focus

On 08/04/2021 23:05, caroline wrote:
> Hi All,
> I was asked if 'we should be managing visual focus everywhere so that it 
> only appears for a keyboard user.'
> 
> Looking at other sites focus is not appearing unless I use my keyboard. 
> But i started to wonder if there's other technology that I should 
> consider apart from a keyboard.

Opinions will vary on this. For some, focus indication should always be 
visible regardless of the input device of the user.

For others, it's acceptable to say that only once a user navigates with 
the keyboard a focus indicator becomes visible.

Of course, for form elements, an indication of which form control 
currently has focus should be shown regardless (as even if a user 
focused an element with mouse or touch, they need to know that is it 
indeed ready to take their input).

As for inputs other than keyboards, these generally either simulate an 
actual keyboard input (so they will move focus, and therefore any 
solution that tries to work out if the user is navigating/operating the 
page via keyboard should pick these up too - though there can be some 
false negatives in certain cases*), or they will behave more like a 
mouse/touch/pointer and provide their own way of indicating what the 
current "point of interest" is that the user can interact with.

In general, I'd say the CSS :focus-visible pseudoclass would be a good 
choice, though it's still not implemented in all browsers (see 
https://www.tpgi.com/focus-visible-and-backwards-compatibility/).

Solutions like whatinput.js can be the ones leading to false negatives 
in certain scenarios (for instance, when navigating using a keyboard and 
a screen reader, the fact that screen readers generally send "faked" 
mouse events can confuse whatinput and make it think the user is 
navigating with a mouse) ... so I'd be cautious using this approach.

(Also throwing in this for good measure 
https://css-tricks.com/interaction-media-features-and-their-potential-for-incorrect-assumptions/)

P
-- 
Patrick H. Lauke

https://www.splintered.co.uk/ | https://github.com/patrickhlauke
https://flickr.com/photos/redux/ | https://www.deviantart.com/redux
twitter: @patrick_h_lauke | skype: patrick_h_lauke

Received on Thursday, 8 April 2021 23:40:09 UTC