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Accessible Event Pairs

By Peter-Paul Koch | July 21st, 2005 | Filed in Accessibility, DOM, DOM Scripting TF

In order to keep our pages accessible to non-mouse users, we must use non-mouse events like focus or keydown in addition to mouse events like mouseover and click. On QuirksMode.org I created the new Event pairs page to study this problem.

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In order to keep our pages accessible to non-mouse users, we must use non-mouse events like focus or keydown in addition to mouse events like mouseover and click. On QuirksMode.org I created the new Event pairs page to study this problem.

Conclusions include:

  • Any perfectly accessible page is restricted to adding event handlers to links and form fields.
  • The click event also fires when a user tabs to a link and then hits Enter.
  • More research is necessary, but I hope these tests will give use a first approximation of the possible solutions.

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