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.
Selecting an element with a pointer moves keyboard focus to it, including when the user presses down on an interactive element and then drags away without activating it.
Why It Matters
When focus and pointer disagree, a user who alternates between mouse and keyboard loses their place, and a screen reader announces somewhere other than where the user is working.
Content can interfere with pointer or keyboard focus behavior.
Examples from the Draft
Worked examples the W3C editors wrote into the provision itself, not
examples invented here.
A user scrolls a document down six screens, then clicks on a paragraph with their pointer. The user then presses the Tab key, which moves the focus to the first interactive component after the position on the screen that was clicked, rather than from the previous position, six screens up the document.
For every interactive element that allows pointer selection (including click events on non-interactive elements):
Check that the keyboard focus moves when the pointer selects the element.
Expected results
#1 is true.
W3C Working Group Status
W3C Maturity Status:developing
Track / Group:input-operation
The draft records no open editors' notes on this provision.
W3C Threads on This Provision
No GitHub issue in w3c/wcag3 carries this provision's label, so there
is no recorded discussion to show. Cross-cutting threads that name no
provision are listed on the
Discussions page.
WCAG 2.2 Criteria That Map Here
From this site's reviewed WCAG 2.2 → WCAG 3 map. The map is
an interpretation, not a W3C mapping: W3C has not published one yet.
No mapping recorded. No WCAG 2.2 criterion in
this site's map is recorded as a predecessor of this provision.
Pointer selection of elements moves the keyboard focus to that element, even if the user selects an interactive element and drags away from the element without activation.
:::applies-when
- Content can interfere with pointer or keyboard focus behavior.
:::
:::example
A user scrolls a document down six screens, then clicks on a paragraph with their pointer. The user then presses the <kbd>Tab</kbd> key, which moves the focus to the first interactive component after the position on the screen that was clicked, rather than from the previous position, six screens up the document.
:::