WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Question on keyboard interaction for tabs

for

From: Maraikayar Prem Nawaz
Date: Dec 17, 2012 9:09PM

Hi All ,

As per WAI Aria Best practices for TabPanel (
http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-practices/#tabpanel ) and
http://dev.aol.com/dhtml_style_guide#tabpanel , down arrow and up arrow
navigation should behave the same way as right arrow and left arrow.

My Friend who is also a screen reader user says:
"it doesn't make sense to use both left/right and up/down arrows to move
between tabs. If you look at desktop *implementations, you will never up
and down arrows used to move between tabs, usually only left and right
arrows."*

Are these conflicting as the screen users would using up/down arrow for
navigation within the document.
Should this be split into two as guideline for Horizontal tabpanel and
Guideline for Vertical tabpanel. Because it for Horizontal tab it makes
sense to use left and right arrow and for vertical tabpanel to use up
and down arrow?

Please provide your inputs..


Regards
-Nawaz