Re: Questions regarding keyboard-guidelines

Hi Katharina,

Everything that can be done on a page with a mouse must also be possible without a mouse; that includes revealing information that usually appear when the mouse hovers on them.

All things that you can drag and drop need a way to sort them without a mouse also. Of course the obvious stuff like triggering buttons, opening and closing disclosures, putting text into formfields, file uploads and so on.

For conformance it’s not important which keys have to be used, but if you make up your own micro operation system to support people with disabilities, than you’re likely to violate other SCs. Here I have 2.1.4 character key shortcuts in mind

Getting creative around a11y can be done only with a profound knowledge and a lot of testing and research. And the result for the users is often disappointing, even if meeting wcag SCs because it’s just not the used look and feel.

Also in the EU you will need a documentation of accessibility features like this which again needs to be accessible.

There are no rules, which keys have to be used, because there normally is a typical key to do something (that should not be overridden, see above).

What a key or combination does depends on many things like operating system, language settings, kind of keyboard, language of keyboard, browser and so on.

So it’s impossible to specify this in general for all kinds of ICT products.

--
Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Marc Haunschild
https://Accessibility.Consulting


Am 28.11.2023 um 14:55 schrieb Katharina Stella Hasenlust | Universitaet Bremen <hasenlus@uni-bremen.de>:



Hello,



Unfortunately, I have problems understanding the guidelines "2.1.1 Keyboard" and "2.4.3 Focus Order".

My specific questions would be:

-Which elements should  be focusable - only interactive elements or also non-interactive content such as text? (There is contradictory information about this on the Internet)

-Do the guidelines imply that the user must be able to only use the tab key to access all focussed elements on a screen? Or would the arrow keys or a combination of tab and arrow keys also be permitted? Are there any rules on how such a combination of tab and arrow keys should be implemented?


An answer to my questions would be incredibly helpful.


Thank you in advance for your feedback.