This Wiki page is edited by participants of the HTML Accessibility Task Force. It does not necessarily represent consensus and it may have incorrect information or information that is not supported by other Task Force participants, WAI, or W3C. It may also have some very useful information.
Tabindex
From HTML accessibility task force Wiki
Bugs
Use cases for tabindex
- signalling that an element should be focusable, especially if it isn't normally so. E.g. to enable heading navigation (until browsers make this feasible)
- In theory, providing a logical navigation path through an application if you are forced to use sequential navigation.
Problems with tabindex
- People add an element with a tabindex, but that messes up the rest of the page.
- It's misery to calculate what tabindex things should have, and if you don't assign them to everything you break stuff. So it can't be used for components etc in any neat way except by adding a pile of JS.
- It assumes a single, linear path through all interactive elements - it cannot be used to construct anything more useful such as separate cycles (e.g. screen readers adn the old opera browser provided different navigation for forms, headers, and general content, Safari doesn't include links by default), or a logical navigation tree.