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From: Poornima
Date: Thu, Jun 08 2017 2:46PM
Subject: Focus indication for Disabled elements?
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Hi All,

Is there a best practice for providing visual focus indication for "disabled button"?

While usability study, we heard from a screen reader user that 'the disabled buttons receiving focus will be helpful'. On the other hand, I think this may be an extra effort for sighted keyboard-only users, as they can see the disabled state clearly.

Couple of questions:


1. If this can be coded as virtual (non-visual) focus, will the screen reader identify its state while tabbing?

2. What is the coding techniques to achieve this?

3. Are the sighted keyboard-only users will be fine with providing visual focus to disabled elements - if you hear about this experience from the usability study?

Any thoughts or suggestions around this will be of help.

Thanks,
Poornima.
Accessibility Consultant & Tester.

From: Tim Harshbarger
Date: Fri, Jun 09 2017 7:35AM
Subject: Re: Focus indication for Disabled elements?
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Can you share with us what issue the user ran into that might have led to that discussion?

Personally, I would suggest working on a better understanding of the circumstances involved in the issue. I say this as a screen reader user--we do not really provide any better solutions to problems in a usability study than anyone else does.

While there might not be anything written in stone that says you must never put keyboard focus on disabled items, it is something that is fairly universal. When something is fairly universal, it tends to become part of user expectations regarding how things should work. I am always a bit hesitant to use a UI design that breaks user expectations--at least not without really good reasons or data.

While putting keyboard focus on disabled items might not end up having a large impact, it is possible that there may be other better options for solving the problem which would not be obvious to someone suggesting solutions off the top of their head during a usability test.

Thanks,
Tim

From: Jared Smith
Date: Fri, Jun 09 2017 7:44AM
Subject: Re: Focus indication for Disabled elements?
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Disabled controls should only very rarely be keyboard navigable. There's an
excellent explanation of and guidance for this at
https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-practices-1.1/#kbd_disabled_controls

I've typically found that any time a disabled control is expected to be
focusable (such as a disabled form button that indicates validation errors
elsewhere in the form) that there is significant potential for confusion
for users (such as users activating the disabled button not knowing that
it's disabled).

Jared