Level A · WCAG 2.0
2.1.1 Keyboard
Everything that works with a mouse works with a keyboard.
Partly automated Some failures are detectable, others need judgement.
How it fails in practice
A carousel whose arrows are divs with click handlers. A custom select that opens on click and cannot be opened with Enter. A drag-to-reorder list with no keyboard path at all.
How to fix it
Use real button and a elements. Where a custom widget is unavoidable, implement the keyboard interaction its ARIA pattern specifies — not just Tab.
At a glance
- Level
- Level A — the minimum. Failing one of these usually makes something impossible rather than merely hard.
- Principle
- Operable
- Guideline
- 2.1 Keyboard Accessible
- Added in
- WCAG 2.0
- EN 301 549
- 9.2.1.1
- Automated check
- Partly automated
Partly automated
How far an automated check gets
A tool finds some failures here and cannot see the rest. A clean automated result means the checks that exist found nothing — not that the criterion is met. This is the gap that makes a green scan look like an accessible site, and it is where our agents and a human reviewer do the remaining work.
Our keyboard agent walks the journeys you give it and records every keystroke, so a failure comes with the trail that produced it. It covers the pages it walks, not every widget on the site.
Related criteria
Other criteria under the same guideline.
Find out which criteria your site fails
We scan up to 100 pages against WCAG 2.2 AA, run the agent protocol on one key journey and send you the report — free, once, no strings.