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data table pagination - focus position?

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From: Tomlins Diane
Date: Nov 7, 2018 11:18AM

This may have come up before, but searching the archives didn't bring up anything directly, so please forgive me if it has.

The setup: we have a health portal application and within this application a patient can go to their profile and see an Activity Log showing every login, and what they did within the application, such as viewing clinical information. It's presented in a sortable data table where you can select how many records per page to display, the maximum is 20/page. A couple of the columns are sortable and at the bottom is the pagination with page numbers and previous/next buttons.

For SR testing, I use NVDA. I'm assuming the typical method for navigating such tables using the arrow and ctrl+arrow keys?

So my question is around focus when changing 'pages' - should focus remain where it is, at the pagination controls and just have it announce 'page 3 of 15'? Is it typical to then have to back up thru the data table to get to the top of the new page of records? Should focus shift to the top of the new set of displayed records?

It's one thing for me to use a mouse, or keyboard, and see the data change when you change pages and then just scroll up and down the page to view it, but what's the expected interaction for those who can't do that?

I just want to be sure we're using the right interaction and not complicating things for AT users.

Thanks for your input,

Diane R Tomlins
HCA IT&S | UXCOE
Accessibility SME