Success Criterion 2.4.3 - Level A
Focus Order
Ensure assistive technologies use a logical focus order when navigating. The order of navigating a screen is usually from left to right, from top to bottom. Make sure assistive technologies use an equivalent focus order. The difference with success criterion 1.3.2 is that this only concerns the focus order.
Impact
People who use assistive technologies such as the screen reader, keyboard, and switch controls benefit from a focus order that makes sense.
Check
“Do assistive technologies use a logical order to navigate through the screen?“
This can be tested with a screen reader or keyboard access.
Solution
Adjust order for keyboard
On Android, you can use several focus properties to modify the keyboard focus order.
android:nextFocusForward: set the next element to move focus to.android:nextFocusUp: specify which element should receive focus when navigating upandroid:nextFocusDown: specify which element should receive focus when navigating downandroid:nextFocusLeft: specify which element should receive focus when navigating to the leftandroid:nextFocusRight: specify which element should receive focus when navigating to the right
<View
android:id="@+id/notFocusable"
android:focusable="false"/>
<EditText
android:id="@+id/field1"
android:focusable="true"
android:nextFocusForward="@+id/field2"
android:nextFocusDown="@+id/field3"
android:nextFocusRight="@+id/field2"/>
<EditText
android:id="@+id/field2"
android:focusable="true"
android:nextFocusForward="@+id/field3"
android:nextFocusDown="@+id/field4"/>
<EditText
android:id="@+id/field3"
android:focusable="true"
android:nextFocusForward="@+id/field4"/>
<EditText
android:id="@+id/field4"
android:focusable="true"/>Adjust order for assistive technologies
On Android, you can set the accessibility order in XML, or modify the accessibility order in code. You can use the android:accessibilityTraversalAfter and android:accessibilityTraversalBefore properties in XML. Or you can use the setAccessibilityTraversalBefore and setAccessibilityTraversalAfter methods in code.
header.setAccessibilityTraversalBefore(R.id.description)
list.setAccessibilityTraversalAfter(R.id.description)Move accessibility focus
On Android, you can send an AccessibilityEvent of the type TYPE_VIEW_FOCUSED to move the focus of assistive technologies to a specific view. The view must be focusable for this event to take effect.
fun focus(view: View) {
view.sendAccessibilityEvent(AccessibilityEvent.TYPE_VIEW_FOCUSED)
}