Easy Accessible Click Handlers

If you add a click event to a non-interactive html element such as a div you should also add keyboard support. For interactive elements like a button this is already taken care of by the browser.

If you use eslint-plugin-jsx-a11y you will see this warning when you add an onClick event:

71:13  warning  Visible, non-interactive elements with click handlers must have at least one keyboard listener jsx-a11y/click-events-have-key-events

To get rid of this warning, my default approach is to add an additional handler for onKeyDown, filter for the enter key and trigger the same event as I have for onClick.

Additionally I add the role and tabIndex attributes as recommended.

function handleClick() { setWhatever(true) }function handleKeyDown(e) {  if (e.keyCode === 13) {    handleClick();  }}return <div  role={'button'}  tabIndex={0}  onClick={handleClick}  onKeyDown={handleKeyDown}>Click me!</div>

In comparison to a button this adds quite lot of code and markup and makes simple components often look more complex than they really are:

function handleClick() { setWhatever(true) }return <button onClick={handleClick}>Click me!</button>

To avoid this, you can add a simple helper function that returns all required attributes, I called mine accessibleOnClick:

export function filterKeyEnter(handler) {  return e => {    if (e.keyCode === 13) {      handler(e);    }  }}export function accessibleOnClick(handler) {  return {    role: 'button',    tabIndex: tabIndex || 0,    onKeyDown: filterKeyEnter(handler),    onClick: handler  }}

In your JSX you can now use the spread opperator to add all attributes returned by accessibleOnClick.

function handleClick() { setWhatever(true) }return <div{...accessibleOnClick(handleClick)}>Click me!</button>

This is one of my favorite helper functions and I use it on a regular basis.

Do you have a similar/different approach for this type of click handlers? Let me know!