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Re: Must elements with onclick handlers be focusable?

for

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Jul 22, 2014 8:21AM

On 22/07/2014 15:00, Stanzel, Susan - FSA, Kansas City, MO wrote:
> Good morning Listers,
>
> Can anyone point me to something which would tell me the proper way to fix such problems. I am now confused whether CSS or JavaScript is the right solution. We are getting WorldSpace and I am sure I will be asked how to fix such problems.

Just as there is no single pattern that can be recognised reliably,
there is also no single solution. In short, there has to be some way to
use the keyboard and also trigger the same behavior that would happen if
the user tapped with a finger/clicked with a mouse on a non-focusable
element with a click handler (note it doesn't necessarily have to be an
onclick attribute...it could be an event listener added programmatically
to the element, or even - if event delegation is used, such as in jQuery
etc - to a parent/ancestor only).

One solution *could* be to add tabindex="0" to the element in question,
making it focusable (but then also adding relevant role="..." attribute
and attaching any other default behavior expected for an element of that
role). Another may be to simply have another focusable element (which
may be a child element, or a completely separate element somewhere else
in the document) that does the same thing. Plus about 100 other
variations on this theme...

P

> Susie Stanzel
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Alastair Campbell
> Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2014 8:54 AM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Must elements with onclick handlers be focusable?
>
> Birkir R. Gunnarsson wrote:
>
>> Basically, we have to ask ourselves, can we make these tools smarter?
>> Can they detect and interpret Javascript patterns and understand the
>> purpose of the onclick functionality?
>>
>>
> I guess the point is that it can only "flag" them, they can't be confirmed issues.
>
> To detect this pattern, it would have to detect the onclick, work out that the script forwards to a particular URL, and check if that link is available to the keyboard user. Tall order indeed!
>
> On the other hand, as Jonathan suggested: If you could provide an Xpath or CSS selector for things to ignore for that issue, that would be a lot easier.
>
> -Alastair
> > >
>
>
>
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--
Patrick H. Lauke

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