CODEWITHSUNDEEP
htmlaccessibilitytabindex
El Guapo
El Guapo

Reputation: 597

Browser is not respecting tabindex setting

I have been told by my boss to add tabindex="1" to the Accessibility link in our site footer so that it will be the first thing that someone who browses a site by keyboard can get to and read about the accessibility steps we take.

I have added tabindex="1" to the link which you can see here, but the browser doesn't seem to respect it at all (tested in Chrome/FF/IE 11). There are no other tabindex attributes on the page that I can see, so surely it should get picked up as the priority by the browser.

There are access keys used on the page, could this throw it out in some way?

I am sure it is something really fundamental, but I can't see what it is. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Upvotes: 2

Views: 3720

Answers (1)

AlastairC
AlastairC

Reputation: 3297

It works for me, but as a long-time accessibility advocate I'd like to help persuade your boss it's a bad idea.

To see it working I suspect you are on a Mac and you need to enable keyboard navigation. People who need that would typically have it on already.

However, the reasons that adding a positive tabindex are not helpful include:

  • Someone using a keyboard (or keyboard equivalent device) and can see the screen will be confused. They press tab and suddenly end up at the bottom of the page, then flip back up to the top. Combined with the lack of focus visibility, this will be very difficult to cope with.
  • Someone using a screenreader will probably not notice the tabindex to start with because the main way of navigating is with 'arrowing' (using up/down to go element by element). However, if they are in the content area and press tab to skip to the next link or form control, they will suddenly go to the bottom of the page. Very confusing.

So in summary: Adding a positive tab index on a link in the footer will negatively impact the people it is supposed to help.

Here are the appropriate ways to use tabindex.

There are quite a lot of obvious accessibility issues on the site, I'd recommend getting some advice.

Upvotes: 5

Related Questions