Change the "tab" indexing of the Submit button below comment box in the Speedgrader

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In the Speedgrader, after typing a comment in the comment box, a user should be able to hit the Tab key and then Enter to submit the comment. Instead, the tab indexing of the components below the Comment box are inefficient for quick submission. After typing a comment in the box, hitting Tab will highlight the File Attachment button, and multiple Tab presses are necessary to eventually arrive on Submit.

The user should not be forced to move their hands off the keyboard, to the mouse, in order to hit the Submit button. Rather, the user should be able to type a comment, hit Tab, and then Enter

4 Comments
Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team
Status changed to: Archived

@paulbui 

Thanks for your feedback.  It's always a fine balance between efficiency and accessibility.  

The tab indexing on SpeedGrader is designed using accessibility best practices.

We do not autofocus the grade input box as users that rely on keyboard only navigation would have to shift tab back if they needed to interact with any of the previous elements on the page.  Standard keyboard nav when a new page loads is to put the user at the top of the page so once they start navigating, they hit all the page element.

Let me know if you have any further questions. We will continue to focus on accessibility standards over efficiency.  

paulbui
Community Member

The tab-index workflow does not seem optimized for the most common use case, which is to leave a plain comment. Moving the attach and audio buttons after the submit button would not interfere with the overall workflow because they can still shift-tab back. The page's accessibility is still there because attaching and adding audio can still be done by tabbing beyond the submit button. Those extra tab button clicks would still have to be done anyways every time anybody needs to submit because they have to tab beyond the attach and audio button.

If optimizing for the common case is not possible, then how about the idea of adding a keyboard shortcut that submits (e.g. Ctrl-Enter) similar to email clients. I can also post this as a new idea if needed

paulbui
Community Member

It's fine if we cannot autofocus on the grade input box using default settings if you are trying to preserve accessibility by default.

Can the autofocus on the grade box be made into a custom flag/switch to turn on? 

Also, I did not get a clear response on the effectiveness of the keyboard shortcuts if to use them, the user must use the mouse to click off the grade box.

jvwowd
Community Member

I would like to second the opinion of paulbui. If accessibility is a higher priority, can there at least be a global option in a users account so that they can prioritize efficiency over accessibility across all of Canvas?