WCAG 3.0 is an active W3C Working Draft in development by the AGWG. Requirements, assertions, the conformance model and reporting tiers are still being developed and may change. The latest published draft is the 10 September 2026 Working Draft; this site follows the editors’ draft, which also includes exploratory provisions.
Although keyboard navigation is required to be bidirectional, it is not required that it be symmetrical, even though this is usually recommended practice.
Examples from the Draft
Worked examples the W3C editors wrote into the provision itself, not
examples invented here.
Tabbing through menus, hitting space to open a menu, tabbing off the end of the menu lands you on the next menu. A shift+tab may go back to the last item in the previous menu (symmetrical) or to the last menu (not symmetrical but also does not fail this requirement).
The keyboard interface can always move forward to the next interactive element and back to the previous interactive element.
:::note
Although keyboard navigation is required to be bidirectional, it is not required that it be symmetrical, even though this is usually recommended practice.
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:::example
Tabbing through menus, hitting <kbd>space</kbd> to open a menu, tabbing off the end of the menu lands you on the next menu. A <kbd><kbd>shift</kbd>+<kbd>tab</kbd></kbd> may go back to the last item in the previous menu (symmetrical) or to the last menu (not symmetrical but also does not fail this requirement).
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