Focus After Interaction

Property	Value
ID	focus-after-interaction
Severity	Error
WCAG	2.4.3, 2.4.7
Config	focusAfterInteraction

What it checks

For each attempted activation, focus must remain on the original control or move to a visible interactive or managed target. Lost focus and unexpected noninteractive focus are failures.

The rule requires interaction testing to be enabled. Without interaction data it passes with no violations, which means “not tested,” not that activation behavior is valid.

Eligible controls

Candidates come from the recorded focus sequence and include buttons, role="button", and button/checkbox/radio inputs. The configured action list can contain click, enter, and space.

Default safeguards:

• at most 20 attempted cases;
• 2-second timeout for each focus or activation operation;
• page reload before each case;
• top-level navigation blocked;
• likely destructive labels skipped;
• optional include/exclude selector policies.

These safeguards are heuristic and cannot prevent every side effect. Use disposable test data and narrow include selectors.

Outcomes

Each interactionResults[] item has:

• passed with focus-preserved or focus-moved;
• failed with focus-lost or unexpected-focus;
• skipped with excluded, destructive, limit-reached, or navigation-blocked;
• error with element-missing or action-failed.

Failed cases become error-severity violations. If there are only error cases, the rule has status: "error", the score is incomplete, and the CLI exits 2. Inspect JSON for the action, resulting focus, stable reason, message, and duration of every case.

Configuration

{
  "interactions": {
    "enabled": true,
    "maxCases": 20,
    "timeout": 2000,
    "include": [".audit-safe"],
    "exclude": [".opens-payment"],
    "actions": ["click", "enter", "space"],
    "isolation": "reload",
    "navigation": "block",
    "excludeDestructive": true
  },
  "timeouts": { "interactions": 30000 },
  "rules": { "focusAfterInteraction": true }
}

How to fix

When activation removes a control or opens transient UI, move focus to a visible, logical target such as the opened dialog. Restore focus to the trigger or another deterministic control when the UI closes.