Accessibility: Make Customizer back button keyboard focusable

[himanshupathak95]

Trac ticket: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/63011

This PR fixes the accessibility issue where the Customizer back button was not keyboard-focusable. By removing the tabindex="-1" attribute from the back button in the Customizer section template, keyboard users can now navigate to and activate the back button.

Before -

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/0c4c595b-a921-4b96-ae51-54eb764dbd02

After -

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/281353ff-6fe4-42ab-b41a-095d8ae25e9a

[github-actions[bot]]

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[himanshupathak95]

Here is a screencast of the keyboard navigation for all the sections -

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/2e8609ae-8ef5-413a-a49c-bfd40ed676bc

[xwpankit]

@himanshupathak95 Thanks for the patch! The fix works well, and making the back button keyboard-focusable improves accessibility. 👍

[t-hamano]

Thanks for the PR!

I think there are a few additional things that need to be addressed to fully address this issue.

• The default value of the type attribute on the button element is submit. We may want to use type="button" to avoid unintended behavior.
• There seem to be other non-focusable back buttons. We may want to investigate where they are used and whether they should be fixed as well:
  • class-wp-customize-themes-panel.php
  • class-wp-customize-nav-menus.php
  • class-wp-customize-widgets.php
• There is JS code that removes the tab index. We may want to investigate whether this can be removed as well (Source).
• We may also need to modify QUnit tests (Example):

[himanshupathak95]

Thanks, @t-hamano, for the suggestions.

I have updated all the places needed for keyboard navigation. After testing, I found that the JS code change is not necessary since the tabindex attributes are being added directly in the PHP templates. Also, the Qunit tests are not affected either, but I am not sure if we have to update them.

[github-actions[bot]]

A commit was made that fixes the Trac ticket referenced in the description of this pull request.

SVN changeset: 60482 GitHub commit: https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/commit/74c101b3dffff9fee96eb4da92cd55884d908cda

This PR will be closed, but please confirm the accuracy of this and reopen if there is more work to be done.