Conversation
aaronshaf
force-pushed
the
instui-5181-tabs-roving-tabindex
branch
from
September 8, 2026 12:59
145edff to
d3e6c85
Compare
Tabs previously gave every unselected tab no tabindex and relied on a Focusable wrapper to restore focus, so keyboard users tabbing into a tablist always landed back on the last selected tab rather than following the roving-tabindex pattern from the WAI-ARIA tabs spec. Track focus per tab node directly (dropping the Focusable dependency) and give exactly one tab tabindex="0" at a time: the selected tab by default, or a separately tracked focused tab when activationMode is "manual". Manual mode lets arrow keys move focus without changing the selection until Enter or Space is pressed, for screen readers that reserve the arrow keys for their own cursor. Also add Home/End support to jump to the first and last enabled tab, and set aria-orientation and aria-selected="false" on unselected tabs to match the ARIA tabs pattern. INSTUI-5181
aaronshaf
force-pushed
the
instui-5181-tabs-roving-tabindex
branch
from
September 8, 2026 13:03
d3e6c85 to
72924e8
Compare
aaronshaf
marked this pull request as ready for review
September 8, 2026 18:35
This file contains hidden or bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters.
Learn more about bidirectional Unicode characters
Sign up for free
to join this conversation on GitHub.
Already have an account?
Sign in to comment
1 participant
Add this suggestion to a batch that can be applied as a single commit.This suggestion is invalid because no changes were made to the code.Suggestions cannot be applied while the pull request is closed.Suggestions cannot be applied while viewing a subset of changes.Only one suggestion per line can be applied in a batch.Add this suggestion to a batch that can be applied as a single commit.Applying suggestions on deleted lines is not supported.You must change the existing code in this line in order to create a valid suggestion.Outdated suggestions cannot be applied.This suggestion has been applied or marked resolved.Suggestions cannot be applied from pending reviews.Suggestions cannot be applied on multi-line comments.Suggestions cannot be applied while the pull request is queued to merge.Suggestion cannot be applied right now. Please check back later.
Summary
tabindex="0"at a time, tracked per tab node instead of via aFocusablewrapper.activationMode="manual", so arrow keys move focus without changing selection until Enter or Space is pressed (for screen readers that reserve arrow keys for their own cursor).aria-orientationandaria-selected="false"on unselected tabs to match the WAI-ARIA tabs pattern.Test plan
vitest run --project browser --project node packages/ui-tabs— 61 passedTabsKeyboard.test.tsxcovers arrow/Home/End navigation, manual activation, and roving tabindex placement for both v1 and v2 themesINSTUI-5181