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Accessibility Issue - Hidden keyboard/tab focus for widgets within column section

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08-05-2025 05:03 AM
Tiff
by
Frequent Contributor
‎08-05-2025 05:03 AM

We just had our accessibility testing done on our Experience Builder application. We found that there is an issue flagged for column section. Each column section/widget seems to be a "hidden interactive element" where there is keyboard focus applied to that column section. However, that causes an accessibility issue because it's unclear what is being focused on and there is nothing the user can do, making it an unnecessary "stop".

Can anyone from Esri or users advise or provide guidance - is this something that can be resolved for column sections? Are columns generally not advised to be used for accessibility reasons? 

Shown in photo #1 is the error with the 9, 5, 8 as hidden interactive elements due to the column widget. Also some are nested within one another (in terms of how I built the app) - shown in photo #2 below.

I would love to learn more about best practices and any suggestions before I rearrange my app. Thank you!

Tiff_0-1754395445754.png

 

Tiff_1-1754395405654.png

 

 

12 Replies
TonghuiMing
by Esri Regular Contributor
Esri Regular Contributor
‎03-10-2026 01:51 AM

Hi @Tiff 

The text scroll issue should have been resolved with the latest AGOL 2026 Feb release:

 Non-interactive elements can have keyboard focus when they are scrollable, such as a Legend or Text widget without links.

Let me know if you still encounter other issues. Thanks for bringing this up.

0 Kudos
Tiff
by
Frequent Contributor
‎03-10-2026 08:56 AM

Hello @TonghuiMing thank you for your update! I got my case notification that it was resolved and I believe I was able to confirm that we were all good (hidden element 9 being the biggest issue).

I did notice too, if you can confirm, that the keyboard shortcuts work a bit differently now. When there's a section and headers, instead of tabbing from one to the next, I had to use the right and left arrow keys. I believe that makes sense to me! 

TonghuiMing
by Esri Regular Contributor
Esri Regular Contributor
‎03-10-2026 06:42 PM

Hi @Tiff 

Yes! That was one of the updates that we have too - what's new in the 2026 Feb release

whatsnew.png

And yes, we believe that it makes a bit more sense to mimic the HTML Tabs behavior for these views navigation purposes, which gives a quick navigation into the active section right now, instead of tabbing all the way through the nav before going into the actual section view.