Accessibility fix guide
Focused Element Obscured by Sticky Element
When tabbing through the page, focused elements can become hidden behind sticky headers, footers, or floating elements, making them invisible to keyboard users.
Issue ID: A11Y-FOCUS-OBSCURED-001
Severity: moderate
Impact: Med
Effort: S
Use this article when
- You need deeper remediation guidance than the issue card can show.
- You want CMS-specific steps before handing the fix to a developer.
- You want a repeatable re-check path after shipping the change.
What this issue is
When tabbing through the page, focused elements can become hidden behind sticky headers, footers, or floating elements, making them invisible to keyboard users.
Why it matters
When tabbing through the page, focused elements can become hidden behind sticky headers, footers, or floating elements, making them invisible to keyboard users. This affects usability, compliance risk, and how many visitors can successfully consume the page.
How we detect it
- FreeSiteAudit flags this issue when the rule for A11Y-FOCUS-OBSCURED-001 fails and the page evidence points to Dom body.
- You can usually confirm this by checking the page source or the relevant page settings inside your CMS.
Evidence examples
Check the affected page source, rendered output, or relevant CMS setting to confirm the missing or incorrect element.
How to fix it
- 1Use scroll-padding-top/bottom to account for sticky element heights
- 2Ensure focused elements are scrolled into the visible area
- 3Test keyboard navigation with sticky elements present
How to re-check it
- Tab through the page and confirm focused elements are never hidden behind sticky elements
Related tools
This issue is best verified with the full FreeSiteAudit crawl rather than a single-point mini tool.