Hi everyone.
I have a client that is claiming that to meet accessibility, the arrow keys must be able to move the focus in the same way that tabbing does on the screen.
Its my understanding that this is not correct, that arrow keys scroll the page where it is scrollable and it should not move around the focus of the accessiblity feature.
Please provide me with documentation showing this if you can, they are claiming that Adapt is NOT accessible because of this.
Thanks
Hi Rob,
It seems either you and/or your client are confused about what screen reader accessibility is and how to use a screen reader.
Could you read our wiki on the recent changes regarding Adapt and accessibility, it might prove illuminating, we have gone through a similar experience recently.
Let us know if you need anything else, there is a lot to take in.
Ollie.
It seems either you and/or your client are confused about what screen reader accessibility is and how to use a screen reader.
My take on this was that they were referring to using the course with a keyboard but without a screen reader i.e. motor skills accessibility rather than visual accessibility.
You wouldn't use the arrow keys without a screen reader.
Normally you wouldn't, no - but I get the impression this client is suggesting that Adapt should override the standard cursor key behaviour and instead have those keys move the focus around.
Quite possibly this is down to them having seen a lot of Flash-based e-learning - as in Flash you could indeed use the cursor keys to move focus around (this was actually quite handy if you didn't want to be forced through the tab order, you could just bypass it)
It seems to me that your client is asking you to prove a negative which is naturally (and logically!) going to be challenging. You should turn the tables and ask them to show you whence this requirement to navigate using the cursor keys originates.
Equally a few minutes googling quickly throws up a few sites that discuss keyboard navigation
https://webaim.org/techniques/keyboard/
https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/quickref/?versions=2.1&showtechniques=211#keyboard-accessible
https://www.w3.org/WAI/perspective-videos/keyboard/
https://www.accessibility-developer-guide.com/knowledge/keyboard-only/browsing-websites/