MobA11yN-ARIA: Native Mobile Accessibility, part 8 of 9
Focus Against Input Focus
Mobile has two kinds of focus, and web developers used to one tend to mix them up.
| Input focus | Accessibility focus | |
|---|---|---|
| What it means | Where typing and keyboard actions go | What the screen reader is reading now |
| Who moves it | The keyboard, or tapping a field | VoiceOver or TalkBack swipes and touches |
| What lands on it | Only things you can act on, like "Tap Me" | Anything with something to say, like the text "Hello there!" |
| iOS | First responder | VoiceOver's cursor (UIAccessibility.post(.layoutChanged, argument:) moves it) |
| Android | requestFocus() | Accessibility focus (ACTION_ACCESSIBILITY_FOCUS) |
They often sit in different places at once. Moving one doesn't move the other, so when a screen changes, decide deliberately where each should land.
