Tabindex and Reading/Navigation Order
Difficulty: Advanced
Category:
- Content
- Structure
- Presentation
The underlying source code determines the default reading and navigation order of content in a web page. Tabindex can be used to specify a specific navigation order, but this does not affect the reading order through the page. Tabindex can almost always be avoided if the source code order is logical and intuitive. The reading and navigation order should generally closely follow the visual order of the page. For complex layouts, disabling styles or using the structure/order or text-only views on WAVE can allow you to easily determine default reading/navigation order.
