1893743 - Keyboard navigation within lists of tiles, cards, and footer improvements for about:newtab

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, defect)

Description

[Anna Yeddi [:ayeddi]]

Attachment: Focus order screenshot from the Accessibility Inspector with 21 cards being items 19-75 and footer links 76-82

The keyboard navigation on the New Tab page is cumbersome and the headings and other landmarks are absent making it harder to navigate within the page (bug 1893734). To get to the footer links, a user has to press Tab 75 times (while visually there are 33 focusable elements).

Because the 8 tiles (items 2-17 in the focus order) and 21 story cards (items 19-75) as well as footer list of links (items 76-81) are groups of similar items, we could use the arrow navigation within each of these groups to allow keyboard-only, switch control, and other alternative input devices users to quicker navigate between these groups.

Expected focus order (with Tab key presses):

1. Settings button
2. Search input (bug 1865210)
3. First tile
4. Learn more link
5. First story card/link
6. First link in the footer (Self improvement popular topic at the time of reporting)
7. Privacy policy link

The other elements within these groups are focusable with arrow keys as a spacial navigation. Follow the Firefox View navigation example within the <main> area

Comment 1

[Anna Yeddi [:ayeddi]]

Attachment: Focus order screenshot from the Accessibility Inspector with 8 tiles being items 2-17 and Settings button being 1

Comment 2

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:amy, could you have a look please?

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