My question is about focus management for web accessibility. When we launch a popup/dialog, does focus always need to go to the first focusable element for accessibility reasons or is it acceptable to set focus on an element that we think the user is more likely to want to work with?
For example, if a dialog starts with an input field and a cancel link followed by a dropdown and we think the user would most likely want to work with the dropdown when the dialog loads, is it ok to set focus on the dropdown element? In this case, how would the user know about the previous focusable elements existing on the dialog? But, if the dropdown is where 80% of the users will want to be when the dialog is launched, it doesn’t make much sense placing focus on the initial input field…
thoughts?
Based on my research and what public opinion is: http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?thread=5435 it seems like where the focus goes for a modal dialog/popup would depend on the usecase. For example, it makes sense to set focus on the search input field for http://www.google.com although there are preceding elements that the user can interact with — this maximizes usability for screen reader and keyboard only users. But, in general the focus needs to go to the first element the user can interact with — depends on the scenario.