Accessibility Features of Mozilla Firefox

Firefox includes many features to make the browser and web content accessible to all users, including those who have low vision, no vision, or limited ability to use a keyboard or mouse.

Using a Keyboard

Keyboard Shortcuts

A list of common keyboard shortcuts is available in Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts. Online, you can find a comparison chart of keyboard shortcuts implemented in Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Opera.


Always use the cursor keys to navigate within webpages

Always use the cursor keys to navigate within webpages allows you to move through web content as if you were inside a read-only editor. You can use the keyboard to select web content and copy it to the clipboard. You can enable this feature by selecting Tools > Options opening the General tab in the Advanced panel, and checking the Always use the cursor keys to navigate within webpages option.

You can press F7 at any time to turn this feature on or off. When you press F7, Firefox will ask if you really want to turn on this feature. You can disable this prompt by selecting Don't show this dialog again.



Search for text when I start typing

Search for text when I start typing allows you to quickly navigate to text or hyperlinks in a web page. This feature has two modes. Press / and start typing to search all text on the current page, or press ' before your string to search hyperlinks only. Firefox will highlight matching text or hyperlinks as you type.

The following keyboard shortcuts control this feature:

* Type more characters to narrow your search. Firefox will highlight the next matching hyperlink or text or alert you that nothing matched.

* Press Ctrl+G or F3 to find the next occurrence of your current search string.

* Press Ctrl+Shift+G or Shift+F3 to find the previous occurrence of your current search string.
* Press Backspace to undo the last character you typed. Firefox will back up to the previously highlighted text.

* Press Esc to cancel a search. You can also cancel a search by changing focus, scrolling the page with the mouse or keyboard, or simply waiting for the timeout.

You can change the default behavior of this feature by selecting Tools > Options > opening the General tab of the Advanced panel, and checking the Search for text when I start typing option. If this optionpreference is checked, you can start typing at any time to auto-start an inline search. By default auto-started searches look for all text on the page. You can still explicitly press ' or / to start finding in one mode or the other.

You can use this feature to get to buttons, text boxes and other form controls. Search for the text immediately before the form control you want and press Tab. Pressing Tab automatically exits the search and sets focus to the next form field or button after the highlighted text.