Full Keyboard Access - Using Tab vs Arrows

Question

tarangpatel OP

Created Mar ’23

Replies 3

Boosts 1

Views 1.3k

Participants 3

Hello,

We are working on improving Keyboard Access to our app. We are confused what is difference between using Tabs to navigate and using Arrows.

The reason is Tab is not navigating through every element when a view like tableView is embedded inside Navigation View or TabBarController.

Tab selects the whole view and does not go inside the view and select individual selectable elements.

For this arrow works fine. It will go through all the elements.

Is this normal? I also checked the Reminders app it does the same.

Hence confusing if should we only use Tabs or a combination of Tabs and Arrows to navigate.

Thank you.

Boost

Answer 1

Engineer OP

Apple

Mar ’23

This is normal, it's expected that you need a combination of Tabs and Arrows to navigate. Here's a summary of the different ways to navigate with FKA:

Tab

moves between "groups" (as defined by an element's focusGroupIdentifier https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiview/3601233-focusgroupidentifier)
some views are groups by default, like UIScrollView

Ctrl + Tab

moves linearly between all elements

Arrows

moves directionally

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Answer 2

tarangpatel OP

Mar ’23

Thank you for the response.

So we have to play with focusGroupIdentifier for Tab to work for all user interactive elements ?

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Answer 3

jsponger OP

Feb ’24

@Apple Frameworks Engineer: It would be helpful to understand intended Table focus patterns for Apple like there are for HTML tables with keyboard focus vs screen reader focus in web.

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