ChatGPT: Broken Keyboard Accessibility on the Web Version

By Manjunath Vangala, 30 December, 2024

Forum
Windows

Hi,
I’ve been facing an issue with ChatGPT’s web version related to keyboard accessibility.
When opening ChatGPT on the web version, the keyboard cursor gets trapped in a dialog box. Using the up and down arrow keys results in the screen reader saying "blank," and it becomes impossible to escape or tab out of the box. To navigate through ChatGPT, you need to press Insert + Spacebar and hit Enter. This action is a workaround to land you in the ChatGPT edit box. From there, you can escape and use the up or down arrow keys to view your previous chats and model selector options.
Additionally, after typing a prompt in the edit box and pressing Enter, the cursor returns to the same dialog box and does not allow navigation using the Tab or Escape keys. It becomes necessary to press Insert + Spacebar again, followed by Enter, to return to the edit box. After that, pressing Escape and using the up arrow key allows reviewing the generated response. After typing a second prompt and pressing Enter, the cursor will no longer drop back into the dialog box, temporarily resolving the issue.
The expected behavior is that when we open ChatGPT, the cursor should drop directly into the prompt edit box, not into this dialog box.
I've noticed this issue starting right after OpenAI concluded their 12-day event.
Is anyone else experiencing this? I'm on Windows 11 and using the latest version of NVDA and Google Chrome.

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Comments

By Lingelwap on Wednesday, January 1, 2025 - 09:13

I alsow managed to resolve it by turning off NVDA and switching to narator. Then, I clicked on a chat and switched back. After that, it worked fine.

By Tara on Wednesday, January 1, 2025 - 09:13

Hi,
Yes, I'm getting this to with NVDA, and whichever browser I use. I've tried Chrome, Brave and Firefox. So for now, I access ChatGPT on the web using JAWS and it works fine.

By aaron ramirez on Wednesday, January 1, 2025 - 09:13

Experiencing this as well. You can press nvda+control+space to exit the box entirely without then having to press enter or anything else. Makes it a tiny bit easier to deal with the issue.

By TheBlindGuy07 on Wednesday, January 8, 2025 - 09:13

I have this too, but strangely for once voiceover on mac is less impacted by that. Just do shift escape on any os and it will focus back in the edit box and then you can use the usual SR commands to go wherever you want. HTH!
PS: what's nvda-ctrl-space? I thought I knew everything but not that one apparently? :)

By Tara on Wednesday, January 8, 2025 - 09:13

According to the NVDA help feature, CTRL NVDA plus Space is: "Moves the focus out of the current embedded object and into the document that contains it". So thanks Aaron for the tip! I just tried it and it works for me. At least I don't have to keep switching to JAWS every time I want to use GPT.

By Joey G on Wednesday, January 8, 2025 - 09:13

So, I have noticed this as well. I was talking with an Aira agent. The sidebar which shows the chat history seems to obscure some of the page. One thing that works for me is to press Control+K. That is the keyboard command in GPT that closes the sidebar. Once you do this, you will have to shift+Tab to the close button, and hit enter. Then, it works fine. P.s... I did try NVDA+cTRL+space, and that is awesome as well.