Are your product options blocking customers from buying?
Some of your customers don’t use a mouse at all. Here’s what happens when your essential product options are clickable but can’t be selected with a keyboard - and how this stops people choosing what they want and completing their purchase.
Accessibility review: custom components that break keyboard accessibility
Are your product options blocking customers from buying?
Product pages often rely on interactive components - grind type, pack size, subscription options, colour choices.
These steps are essential. If someone can’t select the option they want, they can’t continue.
Most teams assume these components work because they look correct. But visual design doesn’t guarantee functional design - especially for anyone who shops without a mouse.
When an option looks clickable but isn’t
During testing, one issue comes up again and again: product options built as custom elements.
They behave like buttons visually, but underneath they’re just divs with JavaScript attached.
This isn’t necessarily a problem - but it does mean you need to consider essential keyboard behaviour.
If a mouse click works, but a keyboard press doesn’t - then whenever a customer presses Tab to move through the page it’ll skip straight past the essential options.
They try Enter or Space - nothing happens.
The component looks like a choice, but for keyboard and screen reader users it isn’t recognised as one.
If someone can’t select the options they want, they can’t add the product to their cart.
It’s not because they’re confused - but because the interface doesn’t let them participate.
Why this happens
Modern ecommerce stacks make it easy to create beautiful custom interfaces. But unless you’re careful, these components can lose the built-in behaviour that real HTML elements give you:
- real buttons respond to Enter and Space
- real inputs appear in the keyboard focus order
- real labels are announced by screen readers
- real components work consistently across browsers and devices
Custom components don’t get any of that for free. And so unless a developer rebuilds every behaviour manually, some customers are blocked.
What this means for your store
If your product options aren’t reachable with a keyboard, you have customers who simply cannot buy the item. They’ll try, they’ll get stuck, and they’ll abandon the page and head to your competitors instead.
You won’t see this in your analytics as “accessibility failure”. You’ll see it as hesitation, low add-to-cart rates, and unexplained drop-off on pages that should convert well.
What working options look like
When product options use semantic elements - real buttons, radios, or inputs - everything works automatically:
- customers can select their choice with Enter or Space
- keyboard users move through options in the expected order
- screen readers announce the option name and state
- the “Add to cart” button becomes reachable
- everyone gets the same experience, no matter how they browse
And none of this requires changing your visual design. Real buttons and inputs can be styled to match the exact design of your current UI - the difference is that you keep all the built-in behaviour the browser gives you for free.
It’s not a complex rebuild.
It’s one of the quickest wins you can make on a product page.
Try it yourself today: put your mouse aside and tab through your product page.
If you can’t select an option using your keyboard, some of your customers won’t be able to buy from you.
Accessibility isn’t extra.
It’s how you make sure every customer can choose the product they want - and complete their purchase with confidence.