Accessibility

tekivex-ui targets WCAG 2.1 AA, with WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices (APG) patterns implemented throughout. AAA is an aspiration we work toward, not a blanket guarantee — this page explains exactly what that means, what we found when we audited ourselves, and what we changed.

The audit (July 2026)

We ran an internal, adversarially-verified audit of every interactive component against its WAI-ARIA APG pattern: five independent reviewers proposed findings, and each finding was then re-verified against the source with a default verdict of refuted — only confirmed defects were kept.

The result was 35 confirmed violations (4 high, 26 medium, 5 low). We published the full findings in docs/A11Y-AUDIT.md and walked back the library’s earlier unqualified “WCAG 2.1 AAA” claim, because it wasn’t true. As of v3.32.0, all 35 findings are fixed — nothing deferred — each with regression tests.

What changed, release by release

v3.29.0 — the 4 HIGH findings (keyboard-only users were blocked)

Component	What was broken	What changed
`TkxDropdown`	A non-interactive trigger (icon/text) made the menu impossible to open by keyboard (WCAG 2.1.1)	The trigger wrapper is promoted to a focusable menu button (Enter / Space / ArrowDown) — but only when the trigger isn’t already interactive, so passing a real `<button>` never produces a duplicate control
`TkxMenu`	Arrow keys moved only a visual highlight; screen readers announced nothing	Every item has a stable id and the menu panel exposes `aria-activedescendant`, so AT announces each traversed item
`TkxCascader`	The option tree was completely mouse-only	Tree items are focusable; Enter/Space selects, ArrowRight drills in, ArrowLeft steps back
`TkxCarousel`	Auto-advancing slides had no keyboard-reachable pause (hover-only) — WCAG 2.2.2 Pause, Stop, Hide	A persistent, keyboard-accessible Play/Pause toggle renders whenever `autoPlay` is on

v3.30.0 — all 26 MEDIUM findings, across 20 components

Dialog focus management

TkxCommandPalette and TkxColorPicker now trap Tab inside their dialogs and restore focus to the opener on every close path — Escape, selecting an item, backdrop or outside click.
TkxDrawer gained an accessible-name fallback: a new ariaLabel prop, with a "Drawer" default, so an untitled drawer is never a nameless dialog.

Keyboard-operable custom controls

TkxColorPicker’s saturation/brightness area, hue track, and alpha track — previously mouse-only <div>s — are real ARIA sliders: role="slider", aria-valuemin/max/now/valuetext, Arrow keys (Shift+Arrow and PageUp/PageDown step by 10, Home/End jump), and a visible focus ring. The 2D area maps ArrowLeft/Right to saturation and ArrowUp/Down to brightness.
TkxStepper’s clickable steps and TkxPopover’s non-interactive triggers are focusable and Enter/Space-operable (real <button> triggers stay untouched — no duplicate controls).
TkxSpeedDial returns focus to the FAB when closed from the keyboard, and its aria-controls now points at the real, visible role="menu" (the hidden duplicate menu is gone).

Combobox contracts

Searchable TkxSelect moves the full combobox contract (aria-expanded, aria-controls, aria-activedescendant, aria-autocomplete) onto the search input that actually holds focus — previously it sat on a button the user had already left. Multi-select tag ✕ and Clear-all are real sibling <button>s (no invalid interactive-in-interactive nesting), and Backspace on the trigger removes the last tag.
TkxMentions exposes the active suggestion via aria-activedescendant.
TkxDatePicker wires aria-controls to its dialog and ships a full roving-tabindex calendar keyboard model: focus enters the grid on open (or ArrowDown from the input), Arrow keys move the focused day — including across month boundaries — Enter/Space selects, Escape returns focus to the input.
TkxRating exposes arrow-key changes via aria-activedescendant on the radio group.

Correct semantics

TkxDropdown selectable items dropped the invalid aria-selected (not a supported state on menuitem) for the APG-correct menuitemradio / menuitemcheckbox + aria-checked.
TkxCarousel hidden and cloned slides are inert — keyboard focus can no longer land on off-screen slides — and the thumbnail strip dropped its fake tablist/tab roles for a labeled group of buttons with aria-current.
TkxAccordion collapsed panels leave the accessibility tree (aria-hidden + inert once the collapse animation ends), so content behind a closed disclosure is neither read nor Tab-reachable.
TkxTag’s remove button is a sibling of the clickable body, not a descendant — two independent tab stops, no nested interactive elements.

Widget plumbing

TkxTabs derives its tab count from the actual tabs — arrow navigation no longer silently no-ops unless a consumer hand-passed tabCount — and arrow keys, Home, and End all skip disabled tabs.
TkxSlider sets aria-valuetext from your formatValue, so AT announces “$50” rather than “50”.
TkxTable sets aria-rowcount in virtual mode so windowed aria-rowindex values have a declared total.
TkxDataGrid gained its keyboard model (completed in v3.32.0, below).

TkxCommandPalette’s search combobox has a real accessible name (was placeholder-only), localizable via the new searchCommands locale key.
TkxAccordion wraps each trigger in role="heading" with a new headingLevel prop (default 3) for screen-reader heading navigation, and the redundant role="button" on the native button was removed.
TkxNumberInput is a proper role="spinbutton" — its aria-valuemin/max/now previously sat on a textbox role where AT ignores them entirely. Adds aria-valuetext for formatted values and aria-readonly.
TkxSlider’s visible label now actually names the thumb via aria-labelledby (a label[for] can’t activate a role="slider" div, so the old association was dangling). Range thumbs keep distinguishable “start”/“end” names.
TkxField no longer emits dangling aria-describedby idrefs (hint id while an error is shown; error id when isInvalid has no error string).

Also in v3.31.0: the seven a11y label keys — selectNoOptions, dropdownMenu, commandPalette, dataGrid, pagination, dismiss, searchCommands — got native translations in all 44 locales, using platform-conventional terminology per language.

v3.32.0 — the last two deferrals, closed

TkxDataGrid — the complete APG Grid keyboard model:
- True per-cell roving tabindex: exactly one cell holds tabIndex=0; Tab enters the grid directly on the active cell and Tab leaves it (the container is no longer a tab stop). The active cell survives virtual-window unmounts via remembered coordinates.
- PageUp/PageDown move by a viewport-sized page of rows.
- Virtualization-aware navigation: Arrow/Page/Ctrl+Home/Ctrl+End work in absolute row space — moving past the rendered window scrolls the virtual viewport and focuses the target once it renders. Ctrl+End reaches the true last row even when it isn’t rendered.
- Plus, from v3.30.0: four-direction arrows, Home/End + Ctrl variants, treegrid ArrowRight/ArrowLeft expand/collapse, aria-colcount, and editors/checkboxes/filters are never hijacked.
TkxCascader — full tree-structure semantics on its flat-column DOM: aria-level/aria-setsize/aria-posinset on every treeitem, aria-expanded on parents tracking the drill-in path, and aria-owns from each expanded parent to its child column’s role="group" (guarded against dangling idrefs).

One deliberate non-change

TkxDatePicker does not use role="grid" markup for its calendar: the DOM is a flat 42-button CSS grid, and role="grid" without real row structure would be invalid ARIA. The audit listed it as optional; the calendar is fully keyboard-operable and each day button is individually labeled, which is the part that matters to users.

How it’s kept honest

Every fix has regression tests — the suite grew from 2,058 to 2,168 tests across the four releases (tests/a11y-high-fixes.test.tsx, tests/a11y-low-fixes.test.tsx, and per-component suites).
The audit document preserves the original violation text of all 35 findings alongside what shipped, so the fixes are independently checkable.
This was an internal audit. It is thorough, but it is not a substitute for testing with real assistive-technology users, and we don’t claim third-party certification. External audit-firm outreach is in progress.

New props from this work

Component	Prop	Default	Purpose
`TkxDrawer`	`ariaLabel?: string`	`"Drawer"`	Accessible name when no `title` is set
`TkxAccordion`	`headingLevel?: number`	`3`	ARIA heading level wrapping each item trigger

Both are additive — no breaking changes were introduced by any of the four releases.