Table of Contents, Clickable elements focusable using keyboard

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A K
Posts: 13
Joined: Fri Mar 14, 2008 4:39 pm

Table of Contents, Clickable elements focusable using keyboard

Unread post by A K »

We're trying to improve the accessibility of our online user manual. While viewing our manual in Firefox, I used the right-click "Inspect Accessibility Properties" function, and it flagged a keyboard issue with the Table of Contents, namely that "Clickable elements must be focusable and should have interactive semantics".
The documentation from Mozilla further explains:
"If an element can be focused using the keyboard, then it should be interactive; that is, the user should be able to do something to it and produce a change of some kind (for example, activating a link or changing an option)."
"Most interactive elements are focusable by default; you can make an element focusable by adding a tabindex=0 attribute value to it. However, you should only add tabindex if you have also made the element interactive, for example, by defining appropriate event handlers keyboard events."

With my limited HTML knowledge, I can't really take any action on those suggestions. I publish our webhelp manual using one of the premium pack v4 Modern Flexible skins with some minimal customization for colors, etc. Is there a way to make the webhelp Table of Contents accessible by someone using a keyboard only, as per accessibility best practices? Is there something in the skin configuration or html templates that I have overlooked?
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Tim Green
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Re: Table of Contents, Clickable elements focusable using keyboard

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi "A K" (don't you have a name?),

The most recent version of the Premium Pack (4.4) added support for caret browsing for keyboard focusability in the table of contents. If you have an earlier version (you can see your version number in the title bar of the Premium Pack Toolbox utility) you need to get the update with the download link and personal installation password you received when you purchased. (The download link remains the same, only the contents of the installer change.)

Note that you need to activate caret browsing in the browser with F7 to be able to use this.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
A K
Posts: 13
Joined: Fri Mar 14, 2008 4:39 pm

Re: Table of Contents, Clickable elements focusable using keyboard

Unread post by A K »

Hi Tim,
Thank you, yes, updating Premium Pack fixed the keyboard focus issue for the table of contents.
I have a couple of followup questions about other clickable elements in the WebHelp output, but I'll ask them in separate posts.
Thanks again for your help!
Alice
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