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Keyboard Focus

Showing the keyboard focus position clearly at all times is important, both for users with vision impairments as well as "power-users" who prefer to use the keyboard rather than the mouse. There should never be any confusion as to which control on the desktop has focus at any given time. You ought to be able to leave your computer with the focus on any widget in your application, then go off and phone your girlfriend or walk the dog until you've forgotten which widget you left it on. When you return, you should be able to tell straight away exactly which widget it was.

A visual focus indicator is an audio representation of the cursor position relative to the other objects on the desktop. This allows the user to move among objects interactively as the focus changes. The visual focus must be programmatically exposed to assistive technologies. Note that in most cases, this is handled automatically by the ATK, without requiring you to do any additional work. However, you will need to be aware of this requirement when writing your own custom widgets, for example.

  • Start focus at the most commonly used control. If no control in a window is deemed to be the "most" useful, start the focus at the first control in the window when that window is opened. Focus should not be started on the OK or Cancel buttons of a dialog even if they are the most commonly used controls, as they can always be activated immediately by pressing Enter or Escape.
  • Show current input focus clearly at all times. Remember that in controls that include a scrolling element, it is not always sufficient to highlight just the selected element inside that scrolling area, as it may not be visible. See Keyboard Focus Examples.
  • Show input focus only in the active window. Hide all primary visual focus indicators in all windows that do not have the focus and activation. If a single window has separate panes, only one pane should have the focus indicator, and focus indicators should be hidden in all other panes. If it's important to continue showing which item in an unfocused list is selected, for example, use a secondary focus indicator. See Keyboard Focus Examples.
  • Provide appropriate feedback when the user attempts to navigate past the end of a group of related objects. When navigating a list, for example, stopping with audio feedback is usually preferable to moving the focus back to the first object in the list. Otherwise, users who are blind or have low vision may not realize they have returned to the beginning. In the case of a text search in a document, a dialog may pop up to indicate that the end of the document has been reached, and ask if you want to resume the search at the start of the document.
  • Play the system default audio or visual warning signal when the user presses an inappropriate key, or when a navigation key fails to move the focus. For example, when the focus is on the first character in a text field and the user presses left arrow key, or the user tries to perform multiple selection in a single selection dialog. (Note that users with hearing difficulties should be able to configure a system-wide visual equivalent to the default warning sound.)
Keyboard Focus Examples

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