Keyboard and Assistive Technology Navigation
Understand the history of keyboard navigation and why it's crucial for creating accessible websites and applications.
One of the most uncomplicated and straightforward accessibility checks we can run on our websites and applications is to navigate through them without ever touching our mouse. There’s no excuse for not giving this a shot because it requires no special equipment or software—just the hardware we’re already using every day!
Keyboard navigation
Until very recently, using a mouse was the primary way for users to interact with a graphical user interface (GUI). However, this wasn’t always the case. The earliest personal/home computers used text-based interfaces and no mice at all! The 1973 Xerox Alto was the first personal computer designed for use with a mouse, but the use of computer mice wouldn’t become common until 1984 when the Macintosh 128K debuted, including a single-button mouse.
What does this have to do with accessibility? Because keyboard navigation was the basis of early personal computing, it became integral to the way that users expected computers to work. Full keyboard navigation capability persists to this day in every major operating system and browser. We can access and use all the functions of our modern-day computer without ever connecting a mouse, and many people do! Even if the keyboard isn’t a user’s primary method of navigation, they likely still use it in specific circumstances where it’s more convenient to keep their hands in one place vs. switching back and forth between keyboard and mouse. Filling out forms is one incredibly common example of this.
These days, more than ever before, the use of a mouse can’t be ...