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Re: Question on keyboard interaction for tabs

for

From: Bryan Garaventa
Date: Dec 18, 2012 12:49AM

To clarify one thing that may not be clear, there are two modes of
navigation for screen readers like JAWS and NVDA, these being Virtual Buffer
navigation, and the other being Applications Mode or Forms Mode in JAWS.

When navigating using the Virtual Buffer, you use the arrow keys, such as up
and down, to navigate by line up and down the document.

However, for an ARIA Tab control, Applications Mode or Forms Mode is entered
when selecting a tab, then you can use the up and down or right and left
arrow keys to switch between tabs. Depending on how the tabs are configured,
you can press Space or Enter to activate a tab that has focus if it's
programmed to do this.

You can then press Escape or the NumPad+ key to exit Forms Mode in JAWS, or
Insert+Space in NVDA to do the same, and resume navigating the Virtual
Buffer using the up and down keys as before.

It helps to understand this behavior.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jared Smith" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
To: "WebAIM Discussion List" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2012 9:38 PM
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Question on keyboard interaction for tabs


> On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 9:09 PM, Maraikayar Prem Nawaz wrote:
>
>> Are these conflicting as the screen users would using up/down arrow for
>> navigation within the document.
>
> When on a tab panel, up/down arrow keys should never provide
> navigation within the document. Supporting both up/down and left/right
> arrow keys allows natural interaction behavior for vertically oriented
> tab panels, which are fairly common.
>
> Jared
> > >