![]() ![]() When you navigate using the keyboard, your actions are directed by the website. You’re not entirely dependent on the website to confirm where you are on the page or whether what you’ve found is clickable. You’re given a lot of cues about what you’re doing, because you can see the mouse cursor move, and the mouse cursor itself will change shape when it lands on something that’s clickable. You move the mouse, follow the visible cursor until it lands where you want it, and then engage the action you wanted by clicking the mouse. When you use your computer with a mouse, you’re directing your actions. Navigating with a keyboard is very different than navigating with a mouse. These groups may not be 100 percent dependent on the keyboard but it’s more likely to be their primary tool for interacting with their computer. The primary groups of people who could be dependent on a keyboard include blind or low-vision users with a screen reader or screen magnifier and people with mobility disabilities that impair fine motor control, such as multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s disease. These are the keys that are natively defined by browsers for the operation of web pages. But for an average ecommerce site - where the priorities are getting the user to find a page, learn about a product, and then go through the purchase process - those keys are usually all you need. In complex web applications, like Google Docs, more complex keyboard shortcuts are common. The left, right, up, and down arrow keys.The following keys are most fundamental to using a website. Navigating a website with the keyboard primarily requires only a few keys, but they’re used constantly. The keyboard shortcuts that people use with most desktop software are combinations of two to four keys that directly activate menu actions buried somewhere in the program’s options. To be fair, navigating the Internet with a keyboard is very different from using a keyboard shortcut to perform a complex task. This curious relationship between using the keyboard and developing for the keyboard has always seemed imbalanced to me. Programmers are big fans of using the keyboard instead of continually shifting between the keyboard and mouse.Īnd yet a significant percentage of websites make it difficult or even impossible for users to perform some activities without using a mouse or other pointer device. The speaker will almost invariably mention a few of his favorite keyboard shortcuts within that environment for performing his most frequently used activities. That is not the case with Newegg’s checkout form, which properly allows users to tab through it, and ultimately return to the browser bar, without completing a field.Īt many of the web development conferences I attend, there is a talk on how to use an integrated development environment to aid in programming. Online forms are keyboard “traps” when they don’t allow a user to tab through it without completing a field. Blind and low-vision users, as well as those with mobility disabilities, rely on their keyboards - not a mouse - to navigate websites. ![]()
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