Microsoft previews tech to ease creation of keyboard-accessible websites
- Reference: 1772774667
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2026/03/06/microsoft_focusgroup_keyboard_accessible_websites/
- Source link:
Patrick Brosset, principal product manager for Microsoft Edge, says the world needs better tools for accessible websites because less than half use tabindex , an HTML attribute that means visitors to a website who press TAB see a highlight, referred to as a “focus”, over a link or interactive control they can use with the ENTER key. Pressing TAB again moves the focus to another link or control. Developers can determine the order in which controls are highlighted each time users press TAB.
The World Wide Web Consortium’s [1]Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) require use of navigation elements like those tabindex enables.
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Microsoft’s Brosset thinks tabindex is too hard to use.
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“Creating a fully keyboard-accessible site, especially one that has complex widgets such as menus, submenus, toolbars, tabs, and other groups of inputs, isn’t free; it requires a lot of work and knowledge,” he wrote in a Thursday [5]post .
Even developers who are adept at using it, he suggests, “either had to write a lot of complicated code or had to use a JavaScript library. In both cases, you now have more code to maintain, and your website loads more code on startup.”
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“This, in turn, impacts the users of your website too. The more code your website needs, the more time it will take for the site to load and become usable,” he lamented.
[7]Firefox 148 adds master switch for browser bot bother
[8]Publishers cry foul over W3C crusade to rid web of third-party cookies
[9]Summoning the spirit of the BBC Micro with a Pi 500+ and a can of spray paint
[10]New web accessibility guidelines will be ignored, says critic
Microsoft’s fix is tech called “focusgroup” and the company shared it back in 2022. You can find focusgroup [11]here .
“Taking the problem and an early solution to a broad collaborative forum allowed us to mature the focusgroup idea and go through iterations, taking many perspectives into account,” Brosset wrote. “This led to a better, more complete solution for web developers.”
And a solution Microsoft now thinks is ready for wider testing, as Brosset’s post includes an announcement that focusgroup is now available for early testing in Microsoft Edge. As Microsoft contributed its implementation to the Chromium project, developers who use that engine to power other browsers can also take it for a spin.
Jacques Newman, a senior software engineer on Microsoft’s Edge Web Platform Team, [12]posted plenty of detail about focusgroup and how to use it. He’s also looking for feedback.
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Many countries have made implementing the principles of WCAG the baseline for complying with anti-discrimination laws, making focusgroup a potentially useful tool for many developers and therefore also for those who need accessible tech. It could also deliver faster web pages for all users, and perhaps also add to the ranks of those who try to keep their hands off pointing devices! ®
Get our [14]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aaqz0TZQTyVFmzUcgkwyqAAAAxY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aaqz0TZQTyVFmzUcgkwyqAAAAxY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aaqz0TZQTyVFmzUcgkwyqAAAAxY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2026/03/05/making-keyboard-navigation-effortless/
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aaqz0TZQTyVFmzUcgkwyqAAAAxY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/25/firefox_tbird_148/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/29/mow_w3c_cookie_complaint/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/06/summoning_the_spirit_of_the/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2007/10/10/web_accessibility_critic/
[11] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Global_attributes/tabindex
[12] https://developer.chrome.com/blog/focusgroup-rfc
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aaqz0TZQTyVFmzUcgkwyqAAAAxY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Arrant nonsense
Remember when they tried to reinvent HTML standards with IE back in the day? And where the idiots who embraced them ended up?
Re: Arrant nonsense
Yes. That. Just use bloody html
https://justfuckingusehtml.com/
'nuff said.
Re: Arrant nonsense
Hmmm - interesting site. Shame the "Open the Damn Dialog" button doesn't work without allowing the site's JS in NoScript.
Re: Arrant nonsense
None of you commenting here has built a site for an actual, paying client the last twenty years and it shows. The last time you could sell a plain HTML website with some CSS sprinkled on top was back when you could expect a new episode of Friends every week.
Re: Arrant nonsense
You're saying that like it's a good thing. From the would-be visitor's PoV it's a disaster. It means sites get picky about the browser visitors are using. To take a car analogy it's like building a supermarket what only admits customers to its car park if they're driving a particular make of car.
But that doesn't matter to you, does it? You're not building websites for the potential customers, you're building them for marketing and the coloured pencil department. AKA being too clever by hald and not half clever enough. The Internet Exploder mentality has not gone away.
Re: Arrant nonsense
The dev's customer is whoever is paying the bill - and that's not the end user. If the customer want bells and whistles and a site that pisses off their users then that's what they get.
It's all for AI
No human uses keyboard navigation, save for some impaired individuals (but there's a long-standing and "aria" standard to support them), because it's highly ineffective in many ways compared to using a mouse or touch. Also, you can't even use keyboard navigation on most devices today, because the majority of devices used to browse the web don't even have an actual keyboard (ie. because they're smartphones with touchscreens).
In reality it's about making navigation easier for AI agents, who have a hard time separating and understanding navigation elements.Microsoft wants everyone to make it easier for MS's AI agents to steal and abuse their content and services.
Re: It's all for AI
As a long time user of the browser plugin Vimium, I can say this is totally false.
So we can make AI resistant sites ?
Possibly the first time MS have been of use.
If you don't want AI to scrape your site - make it mouse heavy.
I love browsing using only keyboard thanks to the help of the life-changing browser-plugin called Vimium. Unsure if this new idea will help or make things worse for me.
Funny thing is that some of the worst sites for keyboard-only use are the web-enabled m365 apps. Sigh.
April 1st already?
"You can find focusgroup here."
The hyperlink is to: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Global_attributes/ tabindex
Aside: Suspect actually meant to link to: [1]Focusgroup (Explainer)
Given the power of WAP, with respect to the ease with which a WAP site can be made accessible, especially to voiceweb clients, I would of thought focusgroup is something a decent web editor should be able to do, given its something tools like Word have effectively been doing (for outlining documents) for decades.
[1] https://open-ui.org/components/scoped-focusgroup.explainer/
Arrant nonsense
keyboard-enabled websites are easy to write, and always have been. If they are bigger, only insignificantly so. Why am I unsurprised that MS are trying to inveigle their way into this non-issue? Embrace, extend, extinguish, no doubt.