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Re: Where Does The Idea Screen Reader Users Use Tab for Main Navigation Come From?

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From: Julie Romanowski
Date: Oct 11, 2018 9:10AM

As I mentioned in my earlier reply, I know JAWS users who use the tab key along with other key commands to navigate web pages. There are several blind and limited vision JAWS users (from novice to power user) at my company, and as an accessibility specialist, I have worked with every one of them at one time or another. Every single one of them used the tab key to navigate through actionable elements on the screen (not just form elements).

There are a multitude of ways screen reader users can navigate web pages, and as an accessibility specialist, I do my best to test as many of those ways as possible, including using the tab key. In addition, I've run into instances where tab key behavior worked as expected in keyboard-only testing, but failed in screen reader testing (e.g., unable to tab to links or form elements). There have also been a couple of instances where a customer, who was a screen reader user, contacted us to report issues with tabbing to actionable items on pages in our dotcom site, which were missed because the testers didn't try tabbing through all actionable items in their screen reader testing.

I agree that only using the tab key to navigate webpages when doing screen reader testing is a rookie mistake. However, ignoring the tab key or only using it to navigate form controls when doing screen reader testing is also a mistake and can cause the tester to miss some potentially serious accessibility issues.