What’s a keyboard trap? (and why it matters for your online store)

Some customers don’t use a mouse to shop. Here’s what happens when a keyboard trap stops them from completing their purchase - and why fixing it matters for sales and trust.

Accessibility review: keyboard traps explained

Watch What’s a keyboard trap? (and why it matters for your online store)

What’s a keyboard trap?

You’ve seen this pattern before. You might even have it on your own ecommerce store.

A promotional modal appears with a tempting offer - 10% off, free shipping, or early access - in exchange for an email address.

But have you tested if that’s where the journey ends?

Have you tested whether someone can tab into the form field, but cannot tab back out again?

Lack of keyboard accessibility was rated the 5th most problematic issue amongst keyboard and assistive technology users.

It’s a small frustration. But when small frustrations add up across a site… a missing label here, a confusing form step there… they slowly chip away at trust and patience.

How many frustrations will you allow, before it’s enough to give up and leave?

In this short video, I show what that experience looks like for keyboard users. A “keyboard trap” happens when focus gets stuck inside part of a page, like a popup or form, without any way to move forward or back. It’s an invisible wall: the interface looks fine, but the customer can’t continue their journey.

Most of the time, this isn’t intentional.

It’s just a side effect of custom code or third-party scripts that override normal browser behaviour.

The fix is usually simple. But without testing, it often goes unnoticed.

You can design a journey that makes people work harder than they should - or one that simply works for everyone.

The second one always wins.

👉 Try it yourself: leave your mouse behind and see if you can move freely through your product pages and all key areas of your site.

If you get stuck, so will some of your customers.

Accessibility isn’t about compliance - it’s about people.

And it’s about making sure no customer is left out, no matter how they browse your site.