Keyboard behavior

Every EVK action can be done from the keyboard. No action needs hover, drag or a pointer. Controls are native buttons, inputs and links, so Tab, Shift+Tab, Enter and Space behave as the browser defines them. The keys below are the additions. In RTL layouts, left and right arrows follow reading direction.

Query input and tags (EntityQueryInput)

Where	Key	Effect
Text input	Down / Up	Open suggestions and move the active suggestion (announced through aria-activedescendant).
Text input	Enter	Add the active suggestion as an exact-ID tag, or submit the search when no suggestion is active.
Text input	Escape	Close suggestions.
Text input	Tab	Close suggestions and move on.
Empty text input	Backspace	Focus the last tag (it is not removed yet).
Focused tag	Backspace or Delete	Remove that tag. Focus moves to a neighbor, or back to the input.
Focused tag	Left / Right, Home / End	Move between tags.
Focused tag	Escape	Return to the input.

While an input method is composing text, Enter never submits. That holds during the composition and for a short guard afterwards.

Reading and details

Where	Key	Effect
Mention in a passage	Enter or Space	Activate it. A mention with several entities opens the candidate chooser.
Candidate chooser	Escape	Close it and return focus to the mention.
Detail sheet or panel (DetailContainer)	Escape	Close it and return focus to the control that opened it.
Modal sheet	Tab / Shift+Tab	Focus stays inside the sheet until it closes.

Graph

Where	Key	Effect
Graph stage	Arrow keys	Pan.
Graph stage	+ / -	Zoom in or out.
Graph stage	Home	Fit everything.
Expanded (full-screen) graph	Escape	Leave full screen.
Expanded (full-screen) graph	Tab / Shift+Tab	Focus stays inside the graph.

Selecting, inspecting, pinning and adding to search are done with buttons: the toolbar, the selection panel (including pinning by world coordinates) and the accessible graph navigator. The navigator lists every entity and relation, with search and pagination. It opens automatically when graphics are unavailable. Focus is preserved across re-renders by a stable key.

Workspace

Where	Key	Effect
Separator	Left / Right	Resize by a small step; hold Shift for a larger step.
Separator	Home / End	Jump to the minimum size of either pane.
Separator	Enter	Collapse or restore the details pane.
View tabs	Left / Right	Move between Results and Connections (ARIA tabs).

Live page and extensions

• Live page. The page’s own keyboard behavior is never intercepted. Highlights are paint, not focusable elements. Reach mentions through the sidebar’s mention navigator. Locate scrolls to a mention and selects it. The sidebar’s Add and Inspect buttons act on a mention’s entities directly. A host with its own UI can call activateMention(mentionId) to emit the same bounded activation a click would.
• Extensions. Alt+Shift+E (the _execute_action command in both manifests) opens the panel and grants one-time access to the current tab. You can change the shortcut in the browser’s extension shortcut settings.

Presentation

Operator controls are ordinary buttons plus a range input for audience scale. The audience display has no controls at all: it is view-only by design.

Automated tests cover the keyboard-only routes listed in testing. Screen-reader and switch-access behavior still needs the manual script in docs/checklists/assistive-technology.md.