Keyboard navigation on dropdowns

[jackson-dean]

I was evaluating tailwindui for use with my team and was curious why tab navigation of menu items is not implemented? The up/down arrow keys do work. I was curious if these components have been through accessibility audits? It might be fine, but every implementation I have seen before (working at large tech companies for instance) also implements tab key navigation through dropdown menu items so was just curious about how the decision was informed. The example on w3.org also implements tab navigation through the items https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/menus/flyout/#use-button-as-toggle Overall I love the framework just wanted to do some due diligence before committing to the team purchase. Thanks!

[jackson-dean]

Actually I was going through all the w3 stuff and came across this which I think explains the discrepancy quite well! https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/menus/application-menus/#keyboard-behavior

Web application menus are expected to work like desktop application menus. For example, the left and right keys are used to iterate through the top-level items, and the up and down arrows are used to navigate submenus. Pressing the tab key focuses the next item after the menu instead of the next menu item.

So I think regardless of what all the tech companies are doing, I think the tailwind components are at least strictly adhering to standard behavior. It is interesting though that I used to work at a major tech company that had quite strict a11y audits. I'm not sure why this is so inconsistently done. Quite frustrating. But I think at the end of the day consistency with desktop platforms makes the most sense, which is what tailwind is doing 👍