Understanding Focus Not Obscured (Enhanced)

Status

This understanding document is part of the draft WCAG 2.2 content. It may change or be removed before the final WCAG 2.2 is published.

Focus Not Obscured Success Criterion text

When a user interface component receives keyboard focus, no part of the focus indicator is hidden by author-created content.

Intent of Focus Not Obscured (Enhanced)

The purpose of this Success Criterion is to ensure that a component with keyboard focus is visible. This criterion is closely related to Focus Not Obscured (Minimum) but requires that the whole of the component is visible.

Benefits of Focus Not Obscured

This Success Criterion helps anyone who relies on the keyboard to operate the page by letting them visually determine the component on which keyboard operations will interact at any point in time.
People with attention limitations, short term memory limitations, or limitations in executive processes benefit by being able to discover where the focus is located.

Examples of Focus Not Obscured

A page has a sticky footer (attached to the bottom of the vieport). When tabbing down the page the focused item is not overlapped by the footer at all.

Resources

Techniques for Focus Not Obscured (Enhanced)

Sufficient Techniques

CSS: Using scroll-padding to ensure a sticky header does not obscure the focused item (Potential future technique).