Level A · WCAG 2.0
2.4.3 Focus Order
Focus moves in an order that preserves meaning and operability.
Partly automated Some failures are detectable, others need judgement.
How it fails in practice
Opening a dialog and leaving focus on the page behind it, so the next Tab lands somewhere invisible. A form whose fields are re-ordered by CSS but not in the DOM.
How to fix it
Move focus into a dialog when it opens and back to the trigger when it closes. Avoid positive tabindex values entirely.
At a glance
- Level
- Level A — the minimum. Failing one of these usually makes something impossible rather than merely hard.
- Principle
- Operable
- Guideline
- 2.4 Navigable
- Added in
- WCAG 2.0
- EN 301 549
- 9.2.4.3
- 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 the keyboard agent, the agents still in development and a human reviewer do the remaining work.
Our keyboard agent records where focus lands at every step. On a crawl from an account, a check of our own also opens dialogs and menus on one page per template and reports focus that does not move into them or is dropped when they close, so “focus was lost after the payment dialog opened” comes with the evidence. Whether the order makes sense is a judgement.
Rules that check this criterion
tabindexElements should not have tabindex greater than zero
The rule ids are axe-core’s (version 4.14.0), the open-source engine our scan runs, and our keyboard agent’s — the names a report or a CI log will show. An underlined id has a page of its own here.
Where it matters most
The guides that list it among the criteria to check first.
- BFSG for online shops
- BFSG for banking and financial services
- BFSG for ticketing and passenger transport
- Shopware accessibility and the BFSG
Related criteria
Other criteria under the same guideline.
Further reading
-
Focus order
The sequence in which elements receive focus with the Tab key; it must preserve meaning and operability (WCAG 2.4.3).
Find out which criteria your site fails
We scan up to 100 pages against WCAG 2.2 AA, send the keyboard agent through the page you name and email you the report — free, once, no strings.