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Re: QuestionVisual button order versus announcedbutton focus order

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From: Chamberland, Robert
Date: Jul 10, 2015 9:22AM

I think from a usability perspective having focus go to Submit first may satisfy the requirement to be meaningful.

I'm still mulling over the suggestion to left align or stack the series of <buttons>.

What comes to mind:

1) I would just point out these kinds of buttons are very common and usually associated with payment processing forms, often with arrows, and after filling out payment info users expect that the next logical step is to move forward in linear fashion to the next page in the sequence, hence placing focus on the rightmost "submit" or "next".

2) I'm not getting a sense from the comments so far that there's any contravention of standards or best practices in this instance of visual order being different from the announced or focus order.

3) If the language chosen is right to left, now "forward" is to the left, "back" is to the right. The stylesheet will flip the layout around. So this brings up a whole other question (probably should be its own topic):

Does anyone know if screen readers will be reading from HTML source code, and so will read the buttons in the order they're coded (top to bottom, left to right), or as CSS has styled the buttons (e.g. left or right aligned, then announced from left to right or right to left as defined by dir and lang)?

Thanks all for your input!

Rob C