1702932 - Add GUI option to focus hyperlinks by use of the Tab key

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1628476

(Firefox :: Settings UI, enhancement)

Description

[Sven P]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:87.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/87.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open a URL, such as https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/focusing-hyperlinks-on-macos/70545 on macOS Catalina. (Note: I'm not the original reporter, but just reporting it here).
2. Press Tab key to access hyperlinks.

Actual results:

1. Hyperlinks don't receive the focus. This is default behavior on macOS (see Richard Saunders at https://www.rdsaunders.co.uk/accessibility/2019/11/08/lack-of-default-tab-focus-in-firefox-safari and Scott Vinkle at https://www.a11yproject.com/posts/2017-12-29-macos-browser-keyboard-navigation/)
2. The user can change this behavior, but only through the about:preferences page. This is quite cumbersome for an accessibility feature and compared to other browsers, such as Safari.

Expected results:

This accessibility feature would be easier to use if users could set it through a GUI option at the Options page (probably in the "Browsing" section).

Comment 1

[Sven P]

Description:

• The change would ease users to see the focused hyperlink.
• To see how Safari enables this option, see https://www.a11yproject.com/img/posts/2017-12-29-macos-browser-keyboard-navigation/safari-tab-to-highlight-each-item.png

How do we test this?
See "Steps to reproduce" in the report. :

1. Open Firefox' Preferences.
2. Enable the option to display focus on hyperlinks.
3. Open a URL with links, such as https://www.mozilla.org/de/firefox/.
4. Press the Tab key until a hyperlink is focused.
5. Check whether the hyperlink focus is shown (currently: a thin frame around the hyperlink is shown).

Vice versa:
In step 2 disable the option, continue to step 4, verify that hyperlinks are skipped.

When will this ship?
Tracking bug/issue:
Design documents (e.g. Product Requirements Document, UI spec):
Engineering lead:
Product manager:

The accessibility team has developed the Mozilla Accessibility Release Guidelines which outline what is needed to make user interfaces accessible:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Accessibility/Guidelines
Please describe the accessibility guidelines you considered and what steps you've taken to address them:

• I checked https://wiki.mozilla.org/Accessibility/Guidelines : All markup languages (HTML, XUL) and there: "Is the focus visible even when a mouse is not used?"

Describe any areas of concern to which you want the accessibility team to give special attention:

Comment 2

[Pablo]

I will set this enhancement as new since on MacOs 10.15 when i go to that website and i press tab i can´t get focus either on the Suggested topics section, using Firefox nightly 89.0a1 and release 87

Comment 3

[James Teh [:Jamie]]

Thanks for taking the time to file this request. Please note that the a11y-review flag is intended for review of changes which are being implemented, rather than requests to change behaviour.

That said, we already have a request for this filed; see bug 1628476.