Accessibility for keyboard users is really important for people with motor disabilities, visual impairments, and people in other situations. Does Sketchfab have any plans to provide options to use their model viewer with only the keyboard? Right now, there are only orbital and first person views. In the orbital view, you have to use the mouse to navigate. In the first person view, you can move the position of the camera, but you can’t rotate it. Can optional keyboard controls be added to pan, rotate, and zoom in both viewing modes?
Right now, I’m working for a college to make their course materials accessible to students with all levels of ability. I’m working on Geology courses, and they use a lot of rock models here on Sketchfab for students to analyze. When a student with a motor disability (for example, partial paralysis) may try to navigate the viewer, they would struggle to use a mouse or trackpad because they require quite a bit of precision and multiple inputs from one hand to move around the model. Keyboard controls would allow them to navigate the viewer easier by pressing a single key or holding it to look around the model, zoom in, or rotate. This would be a huge benefit in accessibility to all people!
Another important feature is being able to see the focus in the viewer when using the keyboard and the tab key to navigate the page. It’s very confusing to users when they have to guess where their focus is to navigate properly in the viewer. When I tried using the tab key on the webpage, I couldn’t tell where my focus was at all on the entire webpage when trying to get to the model viewer. Having a clear focus (indicated by a black box or something of the like) would help all users to better know where they are on the webpage or what would happen if they pressed enter.
The features I’ve discussed would be a huge benefit not only to users with disabilities, but it could also help regular users who simply need more precision in their control compared to using a mouse. They would also help students to better access class information and participate in classes when they’re doing things such as analyzing rock models on Sketchfab.
One other question: Does Sketchfab have any plans or a statement on increasing accessibility?