Why does useLandmark navigate back within regions rather than at the start of regions?

[Sidnioulz]

We've started using useLandmark to provide global keyboard shortcuts for landmark nav for users without a screen reader.

One thing I've noticed that has deeply surprised me is that, when I tab into a specific button within an aside landmark, press F6 to go to the next main landmark, and then Shift+F6 to return to my previous aside landmark, that very button receives focus.

I would have expected focus to return to the start of the aside landmark instead. This is what NVDA does, for instance.

Having shown our implementation to accessibility experts, they commented on the behaviour and also found it unexpected.

I am curious if there is a specific rationale behind that, and particularly if user research was conducted. If it is unclear whether your chosen approach is better than NVDA's, I'm also curious if you'd be open to a config flag controlling that behaviour in the hook.

Thanks

[snowystinger]

@majornista do you have any opinions?

we did intentionally decide to move focus to the last focused element in an landmark when navigating through them again because that seemed to retain more context, but if other more native landmark implementations are behaving a different way, maybe we should re-evaluate

it looks like VO also always goes to the start of the landmark

[majornista]

Our thinking is that if you are working within a web app that defines panels, sidebars, etc. as landmarks regions, you would want focus to be restored to the last place you were within a panel. For example, if a document you are editing has a comment panel, you might use F6 to navigate from where you are in the document to the comment panel. When you Shift+Tab to restore focus to the landmark region that contains the document, you would want to pick up where you left off, rather than at the start of the landmark region.