Our team in Mexico just started doing structured keyboard-only testing as part of our accessibility regression suite. We’re covering the obvious stuff — Tab order, Enter/Space on buttons, Escape to close modals.
But I keep feeling like we’re missing things. Would love to crowdsource a more complete checklist from people who do this regularly.
Here’s what we currently check:
- All interactive elements reachable via
Tab/Shift+Tab - Visible focus indicator present at all times
- Forms submittable without a mouse
- Modals trap focus correctly and return focus on close
- Skip navigation link present and functional
- Dropdowns operable with arrow keys
What are we missing?
Particularly interested in edge cases around:
- Single page app routing — focus management when the “page” changes
- Custom components like date pickers and data tables
- Toast/notification interactions

For SPA routing specifically — the accepted pattern is moving focus to either the new page
<h1>or a skip link after navigation. Most teams just… don’t do this. It’s a significant failure for screen reader users but keyboard-only users are also affected.