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Re: Inactive controls, focus behaviour

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Feb 25, 2019 5:25AM

The way I look at it is to follow the first rule of ARIA, do not use
ARIA when a native solution is available, i.e. use the HTmL5 required
attribute over aria-required="true" where it can be used.
Browsers consistently remove disabled elements from the focus order, I
assume there is a user agent recommendation to do this somewhere in
the HTmL spec.
If we think this is a bad idea, we need to start by convincing those
who wrote the standard and the browser vendors to cange this.
Then there is the issue of consistency, if natively disabled elements
are removed from the focus order, I assume custom elements should as
well.
Sometimes this gets tricky, e.g. when writing JavaScript for keybord
navigation within composite elements such as radio buttons or
dropdowns you'd have to consider whether an element is disabled or not
when you code the keyboard navigation behaviors.
I agree with Jonathan (as I usually do) that 3.2.3 does not apply to
form controls, only to "navigational elements", i.e. links.
I'll make a confession, I think I've never called a 3.2.3 violation in
a decade of WCAG audits, please don't tell anyone if that was a
mistake. ;)

Cheers
-B


On 2/25/19, Patrick H. Lauke < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> On 25/02/2019 10:34, Isabel Holdsworth wrote:
>> Accessibility experts are divided on the subject of whether disabled
>> components should remain in the tab order. Personally, on balance, I
>> think that disabling a component should make it unfocusable and remove
>> it from the tab order. But this issue of breaking consistency is an
>> interesting one, and it would be great to read other people's
>> thoughts.
>
> As probably said previously, to me as a sighted user, seeing controls
> that are disabled still gives me hints/information that those
> options/controls are there and that there are situations where I may be
> able to use them (a la "presumably, depending on other choices I make in
> this form, I can also activate X"). However, this additional information
> is not always very helpful/relevant.
>
> So it's a contextually dependent judgement call, really.
>
> P
> --
> Patrick H. Lauke
>
> www.splintered.co.uk | https://github.com/patrickhlauke
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> > > > >


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