See Our Latest Victories | PETA

Join PETA’s Action Team to Help Animals | PETA

Work at PETA or the PETA Foundation | PETA

K–12 Lesson Plans and Classroom Tips for Compassionate Teachers

Animal Issues | PETA

PETA Vanguard Society | PETA

How Wildlife Is Exploited and What You Can Do | Issues | PETA

When selecting a user interface component with the keyboard, the focus indicator must 
not be completely obscured by anything in front of it.

## Why this matters

When using a keyboard, it is important that the user can see where they are on the page.
If the focus indicator is obscured, the user may not know where they are, and may not
be able to interact with the page.

## Examples

Most common examples include:

* Banners at the top or bottom of the page, such as cookie banners
* Fixed navigation bars
* Fixed footers
* Popup modals, such as cookie consent modals

## How to fix

With elements that cover part of the screen, such as cookie banners, ensure
that the user can scroll to see any content behind the banner, without having to close
the banner.

With popup modals, it should usually be impossible to focus anything behind the modal.
Most common modal frameworks will automatically trap focus within the modal, so that
this is impossible. Example: [Bootstrap Modal](https://getbootstrap.com/docs/5.2/components/modal/#live-demo).

## Further reading

This is part of the draft WCAG 2.2 specification and is subject to change.

* [WCAG 2.4.12](https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/focus-not-obscured.html)

ensure-focus-is-not-obscured-minimum

August 2025

July 2025

PETA

Title / URL	Issues
See Our Latest Victories \| PETAwww.peta.org/about-peta/victories/	1
Join PETA’s Action Team to Help Animals \| PETAwww.peta.org/action/action-team/	1
Work at PETA or the PETA Foundation \| PETAwww.peta.org/about-peta/work-at-peta/	1
K–12 Lesson Plans and Classroom Tips for Compassionate Teacherswww.peta.org/teachkind/	1
Animal Issues \| PETAwww.peta.org/issues/	1
PETA Vanguard Society \| PETAwww.peta.org/donate/vanguard/	1
How Wildlife Is Exploited and What You Can Do \| Issues \| PETAwww.peta.org/issues/wildlife/	1

Ensure focus is not fully obscured

PETA

Where this issue has occurred