This is the single most useful accessibility test you can do yourself, right now, with no tools and no technical background. It takes about ten minutes and it will show you real problems.
Why this test matters
Plenty of people don’t use a mouse at all. Some because of a physical disability that makes precise mouse movements difficult, some because they use a screen reader (which is driven by keyboard, not mouse), and some just because it’s faster once you know how. If your site secretly depends on hover states, mouse clicks, or drag gestures to work, keyboard-only users hit a wall, even though the site looks completely normal to everyone else.
How to do it
- Unplug your mouse, or just don’t touch it. Commit to it properly, this only works if you can’t cheat.
- Press Tab to move forward through the page, link by link, button by button, field by field. Press Shift + Tab to move backward.
- Press Enter to activate a link or button that’s currently focused.
- Press the spacebar to activate a focused button, or to check a checkbox.
- Use the arrow keys to move within a set of options: a dropdown menu, a group of radio buttons, a set of tabs.
- Press Escape to close a menu or dialog that’s currently open.
What to look for
- Can you see where you are? As you Tab through the page, there should always be a clearly visible outline or highlight showing which element is currently focused. If you lose track of where you are, that’s a real problem, and a common one.
- Can you reach everything? Every link, button, form field and interactive control should be reachable by Tab. If something only works when you click it with a mouse, a dropdown menu, a “read more” toggle, a custom button, that’s a barrier.
- Does the order make sense? Tab should move through the page in a logical order, generally top to bottom, left to right, not jump around unpredictably.
- Can you get out of everything? If a menu, popup or video player opens, check you can close it and get back to where you were. A keyboard user who opens something and can’t escape it is properly stuck. This is sometimes called a “keyboard trap,” and it’s one of the most frustrating barriers to hit.
- Do forms work end to end? Try filling out a real form (your contact form is a good place to start) using only Tab, Shift+Tab, and Enter. Check you can reach every field, understand every label, and actually submit it.
What good looks like
On a genuinely accessible site, you should be able to do everything a mouse user can do: navigate the menu, open a search bar, fill in and submit a form, open and close any popups, without ever touching a mouse, and without ever losing track of where you are on the page.
This test won’t catch everything
Keyboard testing is powerful because it’s quick and it catches real, serious barriers, but it doesn’t tell you whether a screen reader announces things sensibly, whether your colour contrast is strong enough, or whether your document structure makes sense. It’s an excellent first pass, not a full audit.
Keyboard testing is one part of a manual accessibility audit. See the kind of issues it finds in our sample audit report.
Not ready for a full audit? Send us your web address and we will tell you the three biggest barriers on your homepage, free.
Found problems?
If your site is hard to use with a keyboard alone, that’s usually fixable, and it’s exactly the kind of issue a full WCAG audit catches and prioritises for you.