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Reg focus management for web application screen/layout changes.

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From: Ramya Sethuraman
Date: Aug 3, 2012 5:00PM

Hi,

My question is about focus management for web accessibility. When we launch
a popup/dialog, does focus always need to go to the first focusable element
for accessibility reasons or is it acceptable to set focus on an element
that we think the user is more likely to want to work with?

For example, if a dialog starts with an input field and a cancel link
followed by a dropdown and we think the user would most likely want to work
with the dropdown when the dialog loads, is it ok to set focus on the
dropdown element? In this case, how would the user know about the previous
focusable elements existing on the dialog? But, if the dropdown is where
80% of the users will want to be when the dialog is launched, it doesn't
make much sense placing focus on the initial input field...

Thoughts?


Thanks,

Ramya