Accessibility and Keyboard Navigation

You can work on the canvas without a mouse. This page covers the keyboard-navigation and screen-reader baseline: reaching the canvas, moving through its elements, and hearing what's selected. For the everyday shortcuts (tools, panning, zen mode), see Keyboard Essentials.

Reaching the canvas

The canvas is a focus stop in the normal Tab order, labelled "Diagram canvas". Tab to it from the page and you'll see a focus ring (only when navigating by keyboard, so mouse users see nothing new). The floating panels, the Palette, Explorer, and the mini-map, stay reachable by the keyboard too.

Walking the elements

Once focus is on the canvas:

• Tab selects the next element, Shift+Tab the previous, in the order they're stacked on the board. The canvas scrolls the selected element into view as you go.
• There's no wrap and no trap: pressing Tab past the last element (or Shift+Tab before the first) moves focus out of the canvas to the next thing on the page, so you can always keyboard your way onward.
• The selection ring is the focus indicator, there's one highlighted element, not two competing outlines.
• Elements locked by someone else are skipped, the same as when you click.

This works even in read-only views, since it's just navigation.

Hearing what's selected

Every element carries a name, so a screen reader can describe it, for example Square "Login", Sticky note, or Arrow "yes". A polite live region announces changes as they happen:

• Selection: Selected Square "Login", or a short summary when several are selected, or Selection cleared.
• Editing: deleting an element, and Undo / Redo, are announced too.

These announcements are separate from the on-screen notifications, so you'll hear them even if you've turned notifications off.

Editing from the keyboard

With an element selected by keyboard, the usual keyboard verbs apply: arrow keys nudge it, Delete / Backspace removes it, Space edits its label, and ⌘/Ctrl+Z undoes. The editing verbs are disabled in read-only views and while you're typing in a field. See Keyboard Essentials and the full keyboard shortcuts reference.