Comment by CamperBob2

12 hours ago

What do you mean by "a tab is off?"

Using tab to cycle between interactive elements in a window or page. As soon as you tab and it goes somewhere unexpected, you're cooked.

Normally you press tab to move between widgets. I guess he means if the tab order hasn't been set up properly.

  • It's been a while since I've done actual development, but determining tabindex ordering was a very big deal in the early 2000s when clerks/admins were moving from legacy systems to the web. They did most of their jobs with a keyboard, and if you set up tabindexing so that they can use a keyboard for 90% of their job then they would fly through tasks. If you didn't then you'd have some very angry clients at the end of the project ;)

    So just echoing that this is not just an accessibility thing, but just a good user interface design thing. If your UX designer isn't taking keyboards into account (jettison mobile first development into the sun please) then they have no business building business applications.

    • I worked on an accounting application once. We had the proper tab order written down on paper docs and checked/updated it regularly.

      We would have been murdered by at least the point of sale people otherwise :)

      1 reply →