Using keyboard to focus Prev/Top/Next in topic header

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

Using keyboard to focus Prev/Top/Next in topic header

Unread post by A K »

Hello,
I'm using one of the Modern Flex Standard WebHelp skins from the latest version of Premium Pack, and I'm basically just trying out our published project using the keyboard only to see what the accessibility is like.
This question is about the navigation tools in the upper right corner of the topic header: the Previous, Top, and Next buttons. Is there a way to use the Tab key to move the focus over to those buttons and trigger them to move the user to the next/previous/top page? The scenario I'm imagining is a person reading through the topic page content, using the arrow keys to move down, and upon reaching the bottom of the topic pane, they can press the Tab key, and it would move the focus through Prev, Top, Next, More, before circling back around the to the Table of Contents. Maybe what I'm asking about is way outside the scope of the Premium Pack skins; I don't really know how this would be done. However, I thought it would be worth asking anyway.
Thank you,
Alice
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Tim Green
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Re: Using keyboard to focus Prev/Top/Next in topic header

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Alice,

This is a difficult problem because of the specialized way the links work in the topic header of these skins. We're looking into it but it's not going to be a simple change like making topic links work on Enter. :?
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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

Re: Using keyboard to focus Prev/Top/Next in topic header

Unread post by A K »

Hi Tim,
Yes, I thought it would be a rather complicated issue. I did try to find alternate ways to navigate between topics with a keyboard, which is possible, although not as convenient as the Prev/Top/Next buttons. If you keep pressing Tab while in a topic page, the focus will work its way down through the page and eventually loop back to the top of the table of contents; from there, you can tab your way back down to the topic link you need. It's a lot of tabbing.
I suppose a workaround could be to add one's own "Next"/"Previous" links to the bottom of each topic (once the Enter key topic link activation is in place), although that would be a lot of links to add manually, plus increasing the risk of links becoming outdated when topics are added/changed/deleted.
I also tried to figure out a way to move focus back and forth between the Table of Contents and topic pane with the keyboard, but I couldn't find a universal solution. In some browsers (Firefox), you can use F6 to move focus from the ToC over to the topic pane, but once you are in the topic pane, F6 can't get you back to the ToC. In other browsers (Chrome), F6 doesn't move the focus from the ToC to topic pane (unless I'm missing something), which means you then have to Tab all the way to the bottom of the ToC before it jumps over to the topic. Browser behavior is obviously not Help & Manual's problem, but my brief experience testing out accessibility showed me how having some sort of built-in keyboard navigation solution would be really helpful for the end-users of the published projects.
Thanks,
Alice
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Tim Green
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Re: Using keyboard to focus Prev/Top/Next in topic header

Unread post by Tim Green »

I also tried to figure out a way to move focus back and forth between the Table of Contents and topic pane with the keyboard,
Long-term we also want to improve this, but it's a difficult issue with complex pages like this, particularly since the navigation panes (TOC, index and search) are iFrames inside the main page, the rest of which is frameless. Currently, even when the navigation elements in the topic header are keyboard-enabled, you will need to click in the header to put the caret there so that you can continue to them with the Tab key. :?
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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