Keyboard Navigation

[Loreto Dumitrescu (loretod)]

Greetings,

I believe Blockly has been working on keyboard navigation for the editor and the microbit makecode editor now has it built in. I'm interested in creating a system for users with physical disabilities who use switches to access the block based editor. I started working on a switch interface device that cycles through the keyboard shortcuts and sends the key command when a second switch is pressed. Here is a demo video.

I would like to create a mini curriculum for CS educators to use Makecode Arcade for both creating easier switch friendly adaptive games and allow users with disabilities to create their own games. Here is a blog post briefly explaining this.

I know adding this functionality is probably a heavy lift but I was wondering if there is a timeline for when this might be available in the editor?

Thank you so much for this community and all the amazingly hard work everyone puts into it!

[Loreto Dumitrescu (loretod)]

Hurray! It looks like the feature is now enabled. Thank you so much for this hard work.

Another question... I seem to be able to navigate through almost all the areas in the editor. Is there a trick to getting to the gallery and assets tabs? I seem to be able to tab cycle through all the elements except that area. I also tried using the command +b to select that region but I think it only applies to main work area.

Any tips are most appreciated.

[Loreto Dumitrescu (loretod)]

Ok! I figured out how to get to the gallery images using keyboard nav. Here is a screencast of the process. I had to enable the highlight focus feature on my Vivaldi browser to see that the menu bar was active and then select the right arrow to get to the gallery tab. I have a few asks if possible:

• Make the focus more pronounced by default without having to add extensions or features? Some users might not be familiar with how to do this. Similar to the functionality in the main editor window.
• When opening the editor, focus the first tab press the menu header. I currently had to tab cycle through all the UI in the main window and then all the UI in the image editor window until I got to the header.
• Within the gallery, make it possible to use arrow key navigation through the images.
• After selecting an image via enter or space, focus on the header again or the close button instead of again having to tab through the main and editor window UIs.

Most appreciated!