Visible focus indicators are a key aspect of keyboard usability, which you can learn more about in the following knowledge base entry:
The most prevalent issue across DuckDuckGo in terms of accessibility is the lack of visible focus indicators. These indicators are especially important for keyboard users, who rely on them to navigate the page and predict the results of their key presses. Without visible focus indicators, it can be difficult or impossible for keyboard users to know where they are on the page - it's like not being able to see your mouse cursor.
The general requirement is that all interactive elements have a distinct focus state that is not obscured by other elements and the contrast ratio between the focused and unfocused states are at least 3:1.
Currently, it is difficult to determine the focus on the website. Apart from looking at the link destinations in the bottom left corner or having very good eyesight that can discern dark blue on black, there are no other visual indicators. The following videos demonstrate this issue.
Tabbing through the landing page
Tabbing through the landing page
Tabbing through the search results page
Tabbing through the search results page
It's easy to see how it would be extremely inconvenient or even impossible to use DuckDuckGo with only a keyboard. Additionally, as you can see in the videos, the focus skips over some interactive elements, which will be addressed separately in the component-level recommendations.
Focus indicators, like other UI elements benefit from a shared design language, therefore, I suggest a holistic solution that can be applied to all interactive components and further tweaked on the component level if needed.
Using CSS outlines is generally the recommended way to indicate focus because they have some advantages over other methods like background colors, borders or shadows.
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