More consistent and robust keyboard navigation

We’ve made a series of changes to enable faster and more consistent navigation for customers using a keyboard to navigate Slack:

• Tab now cycles focus within a section of Slack’s interface, while F6 moves focus between sections as it always has. Your last location within a section will now be remembered when you come back to it.

• • Mac users can also use ⌘+Ctrl+←/→ as an alternative to F6 and Shift+F6.

• F6 navigation is faster, more predictable and more reliable.
• Toolbars are now more consistent to navigate throughout Slack – use arrow keys to reach different buttons, and Home/End to move even faster.
• We improved focus handling to be faster and more robust.

Learn more about how to navigate Slack with a keyboard.

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A friendlier interface for screen readers

We improved how we label and organise Slack’s interface to make it easier to understand where you are in the app, and what you can do while exploring:

• We reduced verbosity throughout the interface.
• We made Slack feel and act more like a native desktop application.
• Screen readers will now better communicate when Slack is loading, having trouble connecting to a network or needs an update.
• We added new preferences to give screen reader-using customers more control over their experience:

• • ARIA application role usage 
    • We recommend toggling this preference to on if using NVDA 2022.1, but keeping it off if you're using a prior version.
  • Automatically close sidebar based on window size
    • This preference is on by default
    • We recommend toggling this preference off for blind screen reader users and keeping it on for screen magnification users.

Learn more about how to use Slack with a screen reader.