Focus and mouse over

In a recent post about menu behavior [1] , I advocated setting focus to a 
menu item when the mouse hovers over it.  This focus is in addition to 
explicitly setting focus do to keyboard navigation. The folks who 
responded to my post agreed that setting focus on mouseover was 
appropriate. 

The issues of setting focus on mouseover also applies to other widgets. 
Specific examples are toolbars and a grid-like color selector.  Should 
focus also be set to the current item in a toolbar or the current color 
when the user simply mouses over it?  This would be consistent with the 
menu behavior.  Also, for users with a mouse who use screen readers, the 
screen reader will speak the item information on mouse over if focus is 
applied. 

There are, however, some drawbacks.  What if the user moves the mouse 
accidentally and focus is changed?  It could be confusing to suddenly have 
the focus on the page changed unexpectedly?  Setting focus on mouse over 
usually makes the implementation of keyboard and mouse interaction a bit 
easier but that shouldn't be the reason for accepting this paradigm. 

My current plan is to advocate setting focus to items on mouse over in 
order to implement support for both mouse and keyboard navigation within a 
widget in the most efficient manner. Thoughts?

thanks,
Becky


[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-xtech/2007Feb/0008.html

Becky Gibson
Web Accessibility Architect
                                                       
IBM Emerging Internet Technologies
5 Technology Park Drive
Westford, MA 01886
Voice: 978 399-6101; t/l 333-6101
Email: gibsonb@us.ibm.com

Received on Monday, 30 April 2007 19:01:26 UTC