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Cornell University

Web Accessibility Reviews

Functionality available when hovering with a cursor must be available to keyboard input.

WGAC 2 criterion 2.1.1 Keyboard (A)
Category Keyboard
ACT Rules

WCAG 2 criterion

2.1.1 Keyboard (Level A)

Tools and requirements

  • Keyboard

Test procedure

When manually evaluating a site, take note of situations when functionality becomes available on hover. Any time a menu or popup appears (or any other function) is triggered by hovering over an element, make sure that a keyboard can perform the exact same action.

One notable example is that large navigation menus need to let keyboard users choose which dropdown they want to open and NOT force keyboard users to navigate through every dropdown before coming across the primary dropdown they want to interact with.

AI Prompt