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The no-mouse challenge: Taking the keyboard navigation red pill^

• Denis Boudreau describes “the no-mouse challenge”: start a timer, open a website and see how long it takes you to run into a brick wall. Participants in his workshops are “blown away” at the brittle nature of the web once you go off the beaten track of mouse navigation. He likens this to “taking the red pill” in The Matrix; the sudden realisation of how inaccessible most sites are. Common issues encountered are:
  • Losing your place, due to a lack of focus styling.
  • Triggering modal windows and having difficulty focussing on them.
  • Jumping around the page at random, due to confusing & illogical page order.
  • Skipping over entire sections of the page that really should be interactable.
• One person who took the challenge is Mickey Mellen, in his article, “An hour without a mouse“. It references my own article – which is always nice to see! – and also shares a useful resource on Chrome keyboard shortcuts.
• Both articles reference the 7% of working-age adults with severe dexterity difficulties, who might struggle to use a mouse. Combined with screen reader users, that’s about 10% of users who depend on keyboard support.

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