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Keyboard-focusable scroll containers

Category
DOM
Type
New or changed feature
Status
Origin trial (Chrome 132)
Intent stage
Prepare to ship

Summary

Improves accessibility by making scroll containers focusable using sequential focus navigation. Today, the tab key doesn't focus scrollers unless tabIndex is explicitly set to 0 or more. By making scrollers focusable by default, users who can't (or don't want to) use a mouse will be able to focus clipped content using a keyboard's tab and arrow keys. This behavior is enabled only if the scroller does not contain any keyboard focusable children. This logic is necessary so we don't cause regressions for existing focusable elements that might exist within a scroller like a <textarea>. Note: The previous rollout of this feature (started in Chrome 127) was stopped due to web compatibility issues, which should be fixed in the current implementation shipping in 130. Note: The previous rollout of this feature (started in 130) was stopped due to an accessibility regression, which should be fixed in the current implementation shipping in 132.

Motivation

Improves accessibility by making scroll containers focusable using sequential focus navigation. Today, the tab key doesn't focus scrollers unless tabIndex is explicitly set to 0 or more.

Standards & signals

Docs: https://drafts.csswg.org/css-overflow-3/#scroll-container https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/interaction.html#focusable-area https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/interaction.html#dom-tabindex

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