Manage Focus for Natural Web Page Interaction

When new content or controls are added through a user's action to a web page, it is important that focus is managed in a way that allows a user to not only interact with the new content, but to make sure the user returns to where he or she prompted the new content to display once the user has finished interacting with that new content.

Just as users who do not have disabilities can naturally continue to browse content from where they left off, assistive technologies users expect to be able to naturally return to where they left off, too. Here are some tips to keep in mind to maintain a natural interaction flow for all users:

Shift focus to new content that is added in reaction to a user-fired event.
Move the focus to the next logical spot on the web page when the user removes content that was added from the user-fired event.
Make sure focus doesn't move to the top of the web page or becomes lost after a user-fired event.
Be sure to move focus to an area on the web page that has programmatically determinable text for screen readers to convey to users.