School of Nursing | UIndy

Graduate Admissions | UIndy

R.B. Annis School of Engineering | UIndy

College of Health Sciences | UIndy

The School of Education | UIndy

Majors | UIndy

Occupational Therapy | UIndy

Adult Learning Programs | UIndy

Phylis Lan Lin School of Social Work and Counseling | UIndy

College of Education and Behavioral Sciences | UIndy

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

June 2025

May 2025

University of Indianapolis

Title / URL	Issues
School of Nursing \| UIndywww.uindy.edu/health-sciences/nursing/	54
Graduate Admissions \| UIndywww.uindy.edu/graduate-admissions/	41
R.B. Annis School of Engineering \| UIndywww.uindy.edu/cas/engineering/	40
College of Health Sciences \| UIndywww.uindy.edu/health-sciences/	34
The School of Education \| UIndywww.uindy.edu/cebs/education/	32
Majors \| UIndywww.uindy.edu/majors/	31
Occupational Therapy \| UIndywww.uindy.edu/health-sciences/ot/	31
Adult Learning Programs \| UIndyuindy.edu/alp/	30
Phylis Lan Lin School of Social Work and Counseling \| UIndywww.uindy.edu/cebs/pllsswc/	30
College of Education and Behavioral Sciences \| UIndywww.uindy.edu/cebs/	30

Ensure focus is not fully obscured

University of Indianapolis

Where this issue has occurred