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Navigate DevTools with assistive technology

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This article helps you use DevTools through the keyboard and through assistive technology such as screen readers. This guide walks you through the tools and tabs which are the most accessible, and highlights issues you may encounter.

For DevTools features related to improving the accessibility of a webpage, see Accessibility-testing features.

Tabbed tool panels containing tabs and pages

For the terminology of tabs, tools, and panels, see Tabbed tool panels containing tabs and pages in Overview of DevTools.

Technically, the tabs are an ARIA tablist.

Keyboard shortcuts

For the default keyboard shortcuts for DevTools, see Keyboard shortcuts. Be sure to bookmark it and refer back to it as you explore the different tools.

Open DevTools

In Microsoft Edge, you can open DevTools by using the mouse or keyboard, in any of the following ways. Which tool is opened depends on how you open DevTools.

Main ways:

Action Resulting tool
Right-click any item on a webpage, and then select Inspect. The Elements tool, with the DOM tree expanded to show the right-clicked page element.
Press Ctrl+Shift+I (Windows, Linux) or Command+Option+I (macOS). The previously used tool, or the Welcome tool.
Press F12. The previously used tool, or the Welcome tool.

Additional ways:

Action Resulting tool
On the Microsoft Edge toolbar, select Settings and more (The 'Settings and more' icon) > More tools > Developer tools. The previously used tool, or the Welcome tool.
Press Ctrl+Shift+J (Windows, Linux) or Command+Option+J (macOS). The Console tool.
Press Ctrl+Shift+C (Windows, Linux) or Command+Option+C (macOS). The Elements tool, with the DOM tree expanded to show the <body> element.
Press Shift+F10 to open the right-click menu. To select the Inspect command, press Up Arrow and then Enter. The Elements tool, with the DOM tree expanded to show the <html> element.
Press Tab or Shift+Tab to put focus on a page element. Then press Shift+F10 to open the right-click menu. To select the Inspect command, press Up Arrow and then Enter. The Elements tool, with the DOM tree expanded to show the focused page element.

You can move among the tools by using the keyboard navigation keys or by using the Command Menu.

  • With DevTools open, press Ctrl+] (Windows, Linux) or Command+] (macOS) to move focus to the next tool on the Activity Bar.
  • Press Ctrl+[ (Windows, Linux) or Command+[ (macOS) to move focus to the previous tool on the Activity Bar.
  • Press Tab or Shift+Tab repeatedly until focus moves to the tabs of the Activity Bar or Quick View toolbar, and then use the arrow keys to move among the tools.

Known issues

  • Some tools, such as the Console and Performance tools, may move focus into the tool's content area as soon as the tool is selected. This may make navigating by arrow keys difficult.

  • The name of the selected tool is announced, but only after announcing the focused content in the tool. This sequence of announcements may make it easy to miss the name of the tool.

To select a specific tool, use the Command Menu. In the Command Menu, a tool is indicated as either a Panel or Quick View item.

  1. With DevTools open, press Ctrl+Shift+P (Windows, Linux) or Command+Shift+P (macOS) to open the Command Menu.

    The Command Menu is a fuzzy-search autocomplete combobox.

  2. Type the name of a tool, and then use the Down Arrow on the keyboard to navigate to the correct option.

  3. Press Enter to run a command.

To open the Elements tool:

  1. Open the Command Menu.

  2. Start typing elements, select the Show Elements command, and then press Enter.

Opening a tool this way puts focus in the content area of the tool. In the case of the Elements tool, focus moves into the DOM Tree.

The Elements tool

Inspect an element on the page

  1. Go to the element you want to inspect, using the cursor in the screen reader.

  2. Right-click the element and then select the Inspect option. This opens the Elements tool and focuses the element in the DOM Tree.

The DOM Tree is laid out as an ARIA tree. For an example, see Navigate the DOM Tree with a keyboard.

Copy the code for an element in the DOM Tree

  1. Right-click a node in the DOM Tree.

  2. Expand the Copy option.

  3. Select Copy outerHTML.

Known issues

  • Copy outerHTML often doesn't select the current node, but instead selects the parent node. However, the contents of the element should still be in the copied outerHTML.

Modify the attributes of an element in the DOM Tree

  • When focus is on a node of the DOM Tree, press Enter to edit the node.

  • Press Tab to move between attribute values. When you hear "space", you're inside of an empty text input, and can type a new attribute value.

  • Press Ctrl+Enter (Windows, Linux) or Command+Enter (macOS) to accept the change and hear the entire contents of the element.

Known issues

  • When you type into the text input, you get no feedback. If you make a typo and use the arrow keys to explore your input, you also get no feedback. The easiest way to check your work is to accept the change, then listen for the entire element to be announced.

Edit the HTML of an element in the DOM Tree

  • When focus is on a node of the DOM Tree, press Enter to edit the node.

  • Press Tab to move between attribute values. When you hear the name of the element, for instance, h2, you're inside of a text input, and you can change the type of the element.

  • Press Ctrl+Enter (Windows, Linux) or Command+Enter (macOS) to accept the change.

For example, when you type h3 and then press Ctrl+Enter (Windows, Linux) or Command+Enter (macOS), the start and end tags of the h3 element change.

Tabs in the Elements tool

The Elements tool contains additional tabs for inspecting things like the CSS applied to an element, or the relevant place in the accessibility tree.

  • When focus is on the DOM Tree, press Tab until you hear that the Styles pane is selected.

  • Press Right Arrow to explore other available tabs.

The DOM Tree turns elements with href attributes into focusable links, so you may need to press Tab more than once to reach the Styles pane.

Known issues

The DOM Breakpoints and Properties tabs aren't keyboard-accessible.

Styles pane

The Styles pane has controls to filter styles, toggle element states (such as :active and :focus), toggle classes, and add new classes. There's also a powerful style inspection tool to explore and modify styles currently applied to the element that has focus in the DOM Tree.

The key concept to understand about the Styles pane is that it only shows styles for the currently selected node in the DOM Tree. For example, suppose you're done inspecting the styles of a <header> node, and now you want to look at the styles for a <footer> node. To do that, you first need to select the <footer> node in the DOM Tree.

You might find it faster to use the Inspect workflow to inspect a node that is in the general vicinity of the footer node (such as a link within the footer), which focuses the DOM Tree, and then use your keyboard to navigate to the exact node in which you're interested.

Because all of the style tools connect in one way or another back to the Styles pane, it makes sense to become an expert in this tool first.

  • With focus on the Styles pane, press Tab to move focus inside and explore the contents.

  • Press Tab until the first style becomes active. If you're using a screen reader, this first style is announced as element.style {}.

  • Press Down Arrow to navigate the list of styles in order of specificity. A screen reader announces each style starting with the name of the CSS file, the line number on which the style appears, and the name of the style. For example, main.css:233 .card__img {}.

  • Press Enter to inspect a style in more detail. Focus begins on an editable version of the style name.

  • Press Tab to move between editable versions of each CSS property and the corresponding values. At the end of each style block is a blank editable text field which you can use to add additional CSS properties.

  • You can continue to press Tab to move through the list of styles, or press Escape to exit the mode and go back to navigating by arrow keys.

For additional shortcuts, see Styles pane keyboard reference.

Known issues
  • If you use the Filter editable text field, you can't navigate the list of styles.

Toggle element state

To toggle the state of an element, such as :active or :focus:

  1. Go to the Styles pane, and then press Tab until the Toggle Element State button has focus.

  2. Press Enter to display the Force element state section, which contains checkboxes.

  3. Press Tab until the first state, :active, has focus.

  4. Press Spacebar to select (enable) the checkbox. If the currently selected element in the DOM Tree has an :active style, it is now applied.

  5. Press Tab to explore all of the available states.

Add an existing class

The Element Classes button is next to the Toggle Element State button. To move the focus to the Element Classes button, press Tab, and then press Enter. Focus moves into an edit text field labeled Add new class.

The Element Classes button is primarily used for adding existing classes to an element. For example, if your stylesheet contained a helper class named .clearfix, you can press . inside of the edit text field to display a suggestion list of classes and use the Down Arrow to find the .clearfix suggestion. Or type the class name out yourself and press Enter to apply it.

Add a new style rule

Adjacent to the Element Classes button is the New Style Rule button. To move the focus to it, press Tab and then press Enter. Focus moves into an editable text field inside of the style inspector. The initial text content of the field is the tag name of the element that is selected in the DOM Tree. You can type any class name you want into this field and then press Tab to assign CSS properties to it.

Computed tab

With focus on the Computed tab, press Tab to move focus inside and explore the contents. Within the Computed tab there are controls for exploring which CSS properties are actually applied to an element in order of specificity.

Explore all computed styles

Press Tab until you reach the collection of computed styles. Computed styles are presented as an ARIA tree. Expanding a listbox reveals which CSS selectors are applying the computed style. These selectors are organized by specificity. A screen reader announces the computed value, which CSS selector is currently matching, the file name of the stylesheet that contains the selector, and the line number for the selector.

Known issues

  • If you use the Filter text field, you're no longer able to inspect styles.

Event Listeners tab

To inspect the event listeners that are applied to an element, select the Elements tool and then select the Event Listeners tab (grouped with the Styles tab).

When focus is on the Styles tab, press Right Arrow to navigate to the Event Listeners tab.

Explore event listeners

Event listeners are presented as an ARIA tree. You can use the arrow keys to navigate them. A screen reader announces the name of the DOM object that the event listener is attached to, as well as the file name where the event listener is defined and the line number.

Accessibility tab

Select the Tab key to move around within the Accessibility tab in the Elements tool.

The Accessibility tab is near the Styles tab. On the Accessibility tab, there are controls for exploring the accessibility tree, the ARIA attributes applied to an element, and the computed accessibility properties. See Test accessibility using the Accessibility tab.

Accessibility Tree

The Accessibility Tree is presented as an ARIA tree where each treeitem corresponds to an element in the DOM. The tree announces the computed role for the selected node. Generic elements like div and span are announced as "GenericContainer" in the tree. Use the arrow keys to traverse the tree and explore parent-child relationships.

Known issues

  • The type of ARIA tree used by the Accessibility tab may not be properly exposed in Microsoft Edge for macOS screen readers like VoiceOver. Subscribe to Chromium issue #868480 to be informed about progress on this issue.
  • Each of the ARIA Attributes and Computed Properties sections are marked up as an ARIA tree, but each section doesn't currently have focus management, and isn't keyboard-operable.

Persisting the Inspect tool's tooltip and grid color overlay

When you click the Inspect tool button and move around in the rendered webpage, the Inspect tooltip changes. To keep the current tooltip and grid color overlay displayed, press and hold Ctrl+Alt (Windows, Linux) or Ctrl+Option (macOS) while you move around in the rendered webpage.

This technique can be helpful when using a screen magnifier or other assistive technologies. If you don't make the Inspect tool's tooltip persist, the hover overlay constantly changes when you use the Inspect tool (Inspect tool button).

See Analyze pages using the Inspect tool.

The Lighthouse tool

Lighthouse runs a series of tests against a site to check for common issues related to performance, accessibility, SEO, and a number of other categories.

Configure and generate a report

  1. When the Lighthouse tool is first opened in DevTools, focus is placed on the Generate report button. By default, the form is configured to run reports for every category using mobile emulation on a simulated 3G connection.

  2. To change the report settings, use Shift+Tab to put focus on Lighthouse settings, or navigate back in Browse mode.

  3. When you're ready to run the report, navigate back to the Generate report button and press Enter.

  4. Focus moves into a modal window with a Cancel button which allows you to exit the audit. You may hear a series of earcons as the audit runs and refreshes the page multiple times.

Known issues

  • The different sections of the configuration form aren't currently marked up with a fieldset element. It may be easier to navigate them in Browse mode to figure out which controls are associated with each section.
  • There is no earcon or live region announcement when the audit is finished running. Generally the audit takes about 30 seconds, after which you should be able to navigate to the results. Using Browse mode may be the easiest way to reach the results.

The Lighthouse report is organized into sections that correspond with each of the audit categories. The report opens with a list of scores for each category. These scores are also links which you can use to skip to the relevant sections. Within each section are expandable details elements, which contain information relating to passed or failed audits. By default, only failing audits are shown. Each section ends with a final details element which contains all of the passed audits.

To run a new audit, use Shift+Tab to exit the report and select the Generate report button.

See also

Note

Portions of this page are modifications based on work created and shared by Google and used according to terms described in the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The original page is found here and is authored by Rob Dodson (Contributor, Google WebFundamentals).

Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.