react-untabbable

An extremely simple and tiny (1.3kB gzipped) utility to make a container and all its children untabbable, but still focusable. This can be useful in achieving a better accessibility for you components, like a menu with nested panels or the dreaded carousel where you probably want some of the items to be untabbable.

Install

yarn add react-untabbable

or

npm i react-untabbable

How does it work?

It quite simply applies the value -1 to the tabbable elements inside a container, restoring afterwards when needed.

• First it obtains all the tabbable elements within a container using the package tabbable
• The current tabindex of each element is saved
• All focusable elements have their tabindex set to -1
• When needed, the previous value for the tabindex is restored to the respective elements

How to use

You can either use the hook or the component itself, pick what better suits your needs.

Component

The component supports having more than 1 child and you can mix React elements with simples nodes (string, number, etc..). Elements must support receiving a ref.

Prop	Type	Default	Description
disabled	boolean	false	Restores the tabbable behaviour

import { Untabbable } from 'react-untabbable';
 
<Untabbable>
    <button>Can't tab into me 😢</button>
    You can mix React elements with simple nodes! (string, number, etc...)
    <div>
        <button>Can't tab into me as well 😭</button>
    </div>
</Untabbable>

Hook

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
ref	ref or ref[]		One or more refs to DOM elements
options?	object	{}
options.disabled	boolean	false	Restores the tabbable behaviour
options.includeContainer	boolean	true	If the owner of the ref should also be untabbable

import React, { useRef } from 'react';
import { useUntabbable } from 'react-untabbable';
 
const MyComponent = () => {
    const firstButtonRef = useRef();
    const secondButtonRef = useRef();
 
    useUntabbable([firstButtonRef, secondButtonRef]);
 
    return (
        <div>
            <button ref={firstButtonRef}>
                Can't tab into me 😢
            </button>
            <div ref={secondButtonRef}>
                <button>Can't tab into me as well 😭</button>
            </div>
            <button>Still tabbable 🎉</button>
        </div>
    );
};