WICG
Consideration of keyup event for Polyfill instead of keydown
Migrated from https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/4758 Originally created by @joe-watkins on 08 Feb 2020 00:50 GMT+9
In the polyfill, keydown event and mouseup event are used for the spatial navigation.
I'm curious to see if there is a great case for leveraging a keydown event as apposed to a keyup event. Keyboard users who may have mobility/dexterity type disabilities could benefit from an event that they have more control over the timing of it being fired. e.g. someone with tremors using a keyboard.
WCAG 2.1 A 2.5.2 Pointer Cancellation currently speaks to this concept for touch/mouse. (should clearly extend to keyboard events IMO) https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/new-in-21/#252-pointer-cancellation-a
Browser manufacturers may be looking to the polyfill for guidance and I was interested in seeing if maybe a keyup event could be the default vs requiring an override.
https://wicg.github.io/spatial-navigation/#handling-browser-events
@joe-watkins, thanks for raising this issue.
I think your opinion is reasonable when thinking of an accessibility point of view. Other than people who may have mobility/dexterity disabilities, sometimes people can keep pressing an arrow key unintentionally. In this situation, the focus will keep moving and it would surprise a user.
For now, it won't be a problem to change keydown event to keyup event.
But, just in case, I'll check samples if those are working well or not.