Accessibility Behaviors for General UI Elements

Listed below are specific keystrokes that are handled by individual User Interface (UI) elements, as well as expected behavior of screen readers when the UI element is focused:

Table 8. User Interface Element Types

UI ElementKey Event
ButtonEither Enter or Space activates the button, causing the same action as a left click.

Note:

In Internet Explorer, button accelerator is triggered by Alt+<letter> and in Firefox, by Alt+Shift+<letter>.

ComboBox
  1. Up or down arrow keys display the popup menu and allow selection of combobox values.

  2. Space or Enter selects a combobox item from the popup.

  3. If editable, alphanumeric keys cause an edit.

Dialog
  1. If the dialog has an accept button defined, Enter key activates it.

  2. The dialog is modal and blocks all other keyboard events.

Content Area (IFrame)
  1. Press Ctrl+F6 to enter a frame, then you may need to press Tab to select the first focusable item.

    Note:

    If frame contains text or HTML, and there are no focusable items, you have to use Virtual PC Cursor option in the screen reader in order to read the text. Press Insert+Z to toggle the Virtual PC Cursor and use up and down arrows to go to the previous and next lines. Turn Virtual PC Cursor off before exiting IFrame.

  2. Press Ctrl+Shift+F6 to exit the content area of a frame and return focus to the frame itself.

List
  1. The up or down arrow keys move selection focus up or down through the list elements. The selection is continually updated. An arrow key press results in a selection event.

  2. Ctrl+Up or Down key: item focus moves up or down without changing the current selection. Spacebar can be used to add the focused item to the selection.

  3. Shift+Up or Down key: item focus moves up or down and the newly focused item is added to the selection.

    Note:

    If the list supports only a single selection, the Ctrl and Shift modifiers have no effect.

Tab BarLeft or right arrow key moves selection focus and selects the new tab immediately. Selection focus wraps around the ends of the tab bar.
Text Field
  1. If editable, alphanumeric keys cause an edit.

  2. Tab proceeds in the tab order. Tab cannot be entered as a character in the text field.

TreeThe left and right arrow keys collapse or expand the current node if it has children. If it has no children, there is no effect. The expansion is non-recursive. However, if the tree is capable of remembering previous expansion state of any subnodes, it should do so.