Carbon Design System

No accessibility annotations are needed for dropdowns, but keep these considerations in mind if you are modifying Carbon or creating a custom component.

What Carbon provides
Development considerations

What Carbon provides

Carbon bakes keyboard operation into its components, improving the experience of blind users and others who operate via the keyboard. Carbon incorporates many other accessibility considerations, some of which are described below.

Keyboard interactions

A dropdown component and its variants multiselect and combo box are reached by

Tab

, with navigation of the options by

Up

and

Down

arrow keys. However, the keys for opening the component and selecting its options are different for each variant.

Dropdowns are in the tab order and operable by Up and Down arrow keys, once opened.

Dropdown

The default dropdown opens with

Enter

Space

, or

Down arrow

. If an option is already selected or if

Down arrow

is used to open the component, the focus moves to the first or currently selected option. Arrow keys change options, and any option with focus is selected with

Space

Enter

, which also closes the dropdown. Pressing

Esc

Tab

closes a dropdown without changing the selected option.

Dropdowns are activated and their options selected with Space or Enter keys. Esc closes without changing option

The Space and Enter keys can be used to open dropdowns and also select an option with focus. Esc cancels and closes the interaction.

Multiselect

The multiselect opens with

Down arrow

, or with the

Enter

Space

keys, which are also used to toggle the selection of any option. Focus handling is the same as with the default dropdown: focus is only moved to the options list if an item is already selected or if the multiselect is opened with the

Down arrow

. Once items are selected, a tag appears in the field, showing a numerical representation of the number of items selected along with an ‘x’. Pressing

Esc

closes the multiselect. Pressing

Delete

while focus is in the collapsed field will clear all selected options.

Space and Enter keys open multiselects and toggle the selection of checkbox options. Esc closes.

Space and Enter keys open multiselects and toggle the state of the checkboxes in the list. Esc closes the list.

Combo box

The combo box’s operation (as well as the filterable multiselect’s) is quite different, since it is a combination of a text input and a dropdown.

Enter

or the

Up

Down arrow

keys will open the list of options, as will typing any matching character or string of characters (which will also filter the list to only show items that match the typed string). Focus handling in the options list is similar to the default dropdown: focus is only moved to the options list if an item is already selected, a matching string is entered, or if opened with an arrow key. Pressing

Esc

will collapse the list or clear the typed string. Pressing

Enter

will select a highlighted option and collapse the list. (If nothing is highlighted in the list, pressing

Enter

will toggle the combo box open and closed.)

Space

cannot be used for selecting, as pressing it will submit a space character into the filter string.

The Enter key opens and selects items in a combo box. Arrow keys can open and navigate the options. Esc clears the input and closes.

Combo boxes can be opened with the Enter or Up and Down arrow keys. Enter selects the highlighted option in the list. Esc clears the input and closes the combo box.

Development considerations

Keep these considerations in mind if you are modifying Carbon or creating a custom component.

The dropdown and multiselect variant use a
```
button
```
with
```
aria-haspopup="listbox"
```
.
The combo box uses an input with
```
role="combo box"
```
,
```
aria-autocomplete="list"
```
,
```
aria-haspopup="listbox"
```
and
```
autocomplete="off"
```
.
The combo box uses
```
aria-controls
```
for a div with
```
role="listbox"
```
.
All variants use
```
aria-expanded
```
to track the state of the listbox.
See the ARIA authoring practices for combo box for more considerations.

Accessibility testing status
For every latest release, Carbon runs tests on all components to meet the accessibility requirements. These different statuses report the work that Carbon has done in the back end. These tests appear only when the components are stable.

Latest version: | Framework: React (@carbon/react)

Component	Accessibility test	Status	Link to source code
Dropdown	Test(s) that ensure the initial render state of a component is accessible.	Passes all automated tests with no reported accessibility violations.	GitHub link
	Tests that ensure additional states of the component are accessible. This could be interactive states of a component or its multiple variants.	Some tests are incomplete, in progress, invalid, or temporarily skipped.
	Tests that ensure focus is properly managed, and all interactive functions of a component have a proper keyboard-accessible equivalent.	Passes all automated tests with no reported accessibility violations.
	This manual testing ensures that the visual information on the screen is properly conveyed and read correctly by screen readers such as JAWS, VoiceOver, and NVDA.	A human has manually tested this component, e.g. screen reader testing.
Multiselect	Test(s) that ensure the initial render state of a component is accessible.	Passes all automated tests with no reported accessibility violations.	GitHub link
	Tests that ensure additional states of the component are accessible. This could be interactive states of a component or its multiple variants.	Passes all automated tests with no reported accessibility violations.
	Tests that ensure focus is properly managed, and all interactive functions of a component have a proper keyboard-accessible equivalent.	Passes all automated tests with no reported accessibility violations.
	This manual testing ensures that the visual information on the screen is properly conveyed and read correctly by screen readers such as JAWS, VoiceOver, and NVDA.	A human has manually tested this component, e.g. screen reader testing.
Combo box	Test(s) that ensure the initial render state of a component is accessible.	Passes all automated tests with no reported accessibility violations.	GitHub link
	Tests that ensure additional states of the component are accessible. This could be interactive states of a component or its multiple variants.	Some tests are incomplete, in progress, invalid, or temporarily skipped.
	Tests that ensure focus is properly managed, and all interactive functions of a component have a proper keyboard-accessible equivalent.	Passes all automated tests with no reported accessibility violations.
	This manual testing ensures that the visual information on the screen is properly conveyed and read correctly by screen readers such as JAWS, VoiceOver, and NVDA.	A human has manually tested this component, e.g. screen reader testing.
Fluid dropdown	Test(s) that ensure the initial render state of a component is accessible.	Passes all automated tests with no reported accessibility violations.	GitHub link
	Tests that ensure additional states of the component are accessible. This could be interactive states of a component or its multiple variants.	Passes all automated tests with no reported accessibility violations.
	Tests that ensure focus is properly managed, and all interactive functions of a component have a proper keyboard-accessible equivalent.	Passes all automated tests with no reported accessibility violations.
	This manual testing ensures that the visual information on the screen is properly conveyed and read correctly by screen readers such as JAWS, VoiceOver, and NVDA.	Test data is either not available or not applicable for this component state.
Fluid multiselect	Test(s) that ensure the initial render state of a component is accessible.	Passes all automated tests with no reported accessibility violations.	GitHub link
	Tests that ensure additional states of the component are accessible. This could be interactive states of a component or its multiple variants.	Passes all automated tests with no reported accessibility violations.
	Tests that ensure focus is properly managed, and all interactive functions of a component have a proper keyboard-accessible equivalent.	Passes all automated tests with no reported accessibility violations.
	This manual testing ensures that the visual information on the screen is properly conveyed and read correctly by screen readers such as JAWS, VoiceOver, and NVDA.	Test data is either not available or not applicable for this component state.
Fluid combo box	Test(s) that ensure the initial render state of a component is accessible.	Automated or manual testing has been temporarily deferred.	GitHub link
	Tests that ensure additional states of the component are accessible. This could be interactive states of a component or its multiple variants.	Automated or manual testing has been temporarily deferred.
	Tests that ensure focus is properly managed, and all interactive functions of a component have a proper keyboard-accessible equivalent.	Test data is either not available or not applicable for this component state.
	This manual testing ensures that the visual information on the screen is properly conveyed and read correctly by screen readers such as JAWS, VoiceOver, and NVDA.	Automated or manual testing has been temporarily deferred.

Dropdown

What Carbon provides

Keyboard interactions

Dropdown

Multiselect

Combo box

Development considerations

Accessibility testing statusFor every latest release, Carbon runs tests on all components to meet the accessibility requirements. These different statuses report the work that Carbon has done in the back end. These tests appear only when the components are stable.

Accessibility testing status
For every latest release, Carbon runs tests on all components to meet the accessibility requirements. These different statuses report the work that Carbon has done in the back end. These tests appear only when the components are stable.