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Bug 26720 - Make scrollable regions focusable so that they can be keyboard accessible
Summary: Make scrollable regions focusable so that they can be keyboard accessible
Status: RESOLVED MOVED
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: HTML5 spec (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: PC Windows NT
: P2 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: This bug has no owner yet - up for the taking
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2014-09-02 18:31 UTC by Travis Leithead [MSFT]
Modified: 2016-04-28 18:18 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

See Also:


Attachments

Description Travis Leithead [MSFT] 2014-09-02 18:31:52 UTC
Getting a bug filed to track this.

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Faulkner [mailto:faulkner.steve@gmail.com] 
Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2014 7:10 AM
To: Travis Leithead
Cc: Matt Rakow; public-html@w3.org; ian@hixie.ch; Jonas Sicking; Alex Russell (slightlyoff@google.com)
Subject: Re: HTML focusable areas feedback

Hi Travis, 

It is a UI accessibility requirement (on keyboard supporting platforms) that scrollable regions be operable (scrollable) using the keyboard. If this is achieved via making the region focusable by default and included in the default focus order, then it is a sane move.

Regards

SteveF

On 25 Jul 2014, at 23:41, Travis Leithead <travis.leithead@microsoft.com> wrote:

>>> I'd like to see scrollable regions added to the list of suggested elements which have the tabindex focus flag set by default to enable this scenario better.  "Draggable" elements are already included in the list in a similar spirit.  IE would be willing to make a change to this behavior if other browser vendors will also make this change.
> 
> Anyone from other browser constituents have an opinion? Steve, does this make sense from an Accessibility perspective?
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matt Rakow
> Sent: Monday, July 14, 2014 6:13 PM
> To: Travis Leithead; public-html@w3.org; ian@hixie.ch
> Subject: RE: HTML focusable areas feedback
> 
> Thanks Travis!
> 
> I'm looking forward to hearing the working group's thoughts on this.  Aside from the accessibility impact I mention below, it occurs to me that this will impact the touch keyboard behaviors that we discussed at the recent web input brainstorming f2f [1].
> 
> Thanks,
> -Matt
> 
> [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2014Jul/0050.html
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Travis Leithead
> Sent: Friday, July 11, 2014 12:04 PM
> To: public-html@w3.org; ian@hixie.ch
> Cc: Matt Rakow
> Subject: HTML focusable areas feedback
> 
> Re-posting this mail from Matt (MSFT):
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I've been investigating keyboard scrolling for scrollable regions within a page (i.e. overflow:scroll) which omit tabIndex, and in particular how they interact with focus.  The current browser behaviors are highly non-interoperable with one another.  For example:
> 
> -IE allows scrollable elements without tabIndex to be focused via mouse click, but they cannot be tabbed to.
> -FF allows scrollable elements without tabIndex to be focused via tabbing to them, but not by clicking on them.
> -Chrome does not allow scrollable elements without tabIndex to be focused via any means, but they can still be scrolled with keyboard if you click on them first.
> 
> I was looking at the definition of focusable areas [1] and the tabindex focus flag [2].  These specify that scrollable elements are focusable, but not suggested to have their tabindex focus flag set or be tab-accessible.  This would imply that IE's behavior is currently compliant with the spec -- the element is focusable but not reachable by tabbing.
> 
> That said, I don't think this is great behavior.  This means that users without a pointing device are generally unable to target and scroll these regions using only the keyboard.  I'd like to see scrollable regions added to the list of suggested elements which have the tabindex focus flag set by default to enable this scenario better.  "Draggable" elements are already included in the list in a similar spirit.  IE would be willing to make a change to this behavior if other browser vendors will also make this change.
> 
> Thanks,
> -Matt
> 
> [1] 
> http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/editing.html#focusable-ar
> ea [2] 
> http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/editing.html#specially-fo
> cusable
Comment 1 Travis Leithead [MSFT] 2016-04-27 22:48:58 UTC
HTML5.1 Bugzilla Bug Triage: Moved to Github issue: https://github.com/w3c/html/issues/292

To file additional issues please use the W3C HTML5 Issue tracker: https://github.com/w3c/html/issues/new Thanks!