Success Criterion 2.4.7
Conformance level AA

Focus Style That Only Appears on Hover, Never on Tab Focus

2.4.7 — Focus Visible

Scenario

Setting

A video-conferencing app's meeting controls

What’s wrong

Focus visible on hover-styled state only (:hover styles never mapped to:focus).

Example

button:focus { outline: none; }

Why it matters

Sighted keyboard users and low-vision users who must see where focus is.

How to test

Compare a control's:hover CSS styling to its:focus styling in DevTools: if hover has a visible effect but:focus doesn't, keyboard users get nothing.

How to fix

A clearly visible focus indicator must appear, in full, on every interactive element when it receives keyboard focus. button:focus-visible { outline: 2px solid #1a73e8; outline-offset: 2px; } Removing the focus outline with no replacement makes it impossible to see which element has keyboard focus.

Outcome

On a video-conferencing app's meeting controls, this barrier is gone for sighted keyboard users and low-vision users who must see where focus is — they no longer have to work around this.

Who is affected