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Accessibility - keyboard navigation to navigate across features on the map?

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12-03-2025 10:12 AM
JonathanTiu
Occasional Contributor

One of our big pushes is meeting global Accessibility requirements.

Is it possible to use keyboard navigation to navigate across features on the map?

it seems because the entire map is rendered on a webGL canvas including the data points, we can't just apply the standard html attribute 'tabindex' since there are no individual html for each point etc.

 

for example if i have a map with a FeatureLayer or a Graphics Layer and say i had like 10 data points/Graphics rendered on the layer...being able to tab into the map and use only some kind of keyboard based navigation to cycle through the 10 points?  without using the mouse.

someone else has suggested having also a list of the data points/features per layer and then maybe tabbing through this list would also highlight on the map thus simulating keyboard navigation of features on the map.

 

I imagine this is a big accessibility shortfall in the Arcgis SDK?  are there plans for Esri to address this soon?

 

1 Comment
Noah-Sager
Status changed to: Needs Clarification

Hi @JonathanTiu, thanks for posting your idea here. The first thing that comes to mind is the Feature Table component. You can use the keyboard to cycle through features and have them selected/highlighted on the map. It sounds like this would work for the outlined scenario, but it would be great if you could add additional details and use-cases if not. This is an area of active development for us, so the more we can hear specifics from the users the better.

FeatureTable component sample
https://developers.arcgis.com/javascript/latest/sample-code/feature-table/

JS SDK Accessibility doc
https://developers.arcgis.com/javascript/latest/accessibility/

Calcite Accessibility doc
https://developers.arcgis.com/calcite-design-system/foundations/accessibility/