nav_menu in page_navbar has challenging keyboard navigation

[emilydomanico]

Keyboard navigation gets stuck in the nav_menu when used in page_navbar

When reviewing the keyboard navigation for web accessibility, I'm finding it challenging to transition from page to page in the navbar when there is a nav_menu with multiple panels.

I understand that the left and right arrows move from page to page in the navbar, but after entering the nav_menu, it isn't clear how to exit in with keyboard navigation. Shift Tab only closes the menu, but doesn't let you reverse to the second tab.

By comparison the bootstrap navbar examples do not have this behavior. Navigation is much easier into and out of the dropdown menu: https://getbootstrap.com/docs/5.3/components/navbar/

If there's a keystroke that solves this in bslib, please let me know! Otherwise, I'm concerned it becomes a keyboard trap.

library(shiny)
library(bslib)

ui <- function() {
  page_navbar(
    id = "main_nav",
    nav_panel("first"),
    nav_panel("second"),
    nav_menu(
      "Menu dropdown",
        nav_panel("menu1"),
        nav_panel("menu2")
      )
  )
  }

server <- function(input, output) {
  
}

shinyApp(ui, server)

Session Info

Details

─ Session info ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 setting  value
 version  R version 4.6.0 (2026-04-24 ucrt)
 os       Windows 11 x64 (build 26200)
 system   x86_64, mingw32
 ui       RStudio
 language (EN)
 collate  English_United States.utf8
 ctype    English_United States.utf8
 tz       America/New_York
 date     2026-08-18
 rstudio  2026.04.0+526 Globemaster Allium (desktop)
 pandoc   NA
 quarto   1.9.36 @ C:\\PROGRA~1\\RStudio\\RESOUR~1\\app\\bin\\quarto\\bin\\quarto.exe
─ Packages ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

package     * version   date (UTC) lib source

bslib       * 0.12.0    2026-08-04 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.1)

cachem        1.1.0     2024-05-16 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

cli           3.6.6     2026-04-09 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

devtools      2.5.2     2026-04-30 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.1)

digest        0.6.39    2025-11-19 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

ellipsis      0.3.3     2026-04-04 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

fastmap       1.2.0     2024-05-15 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

fs            2.1.0     2026-04-18 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

glue          1.8.1     2026-04-17 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

htmltools     0.5.9     2025-12-04 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

httpuv        1.6.17    2026-03-18 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

jquerylib     0.1.4     2021-04-26 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

jsonlite      2.0.0     2025-03-27 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

later         1.4.8     2026-03-05 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

lifecycle     1.0.5     2026-01-08 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

magrittr      2.0.5     2026-04-04 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

memoise       2.0.1     2021-11-26 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

mime          0.13      2025-03-17 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

otel          0.2.0     2025-08-29 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

pillar        1.11.1    2025-09-17 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

pkgbuild      1.4.8     2025-05-26 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.1)

pkgconfig     2.0.3     2019-09-22 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

pkgload       1.5.3     2026-06-15 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.1)

promises      1.5.0     2025-11-01 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

purrr         1.2.2     2026-04-10 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

R6            2.6.1     2025-02-15 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

Rcpp          1.1.1-1.1 2026-04-24 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

rlang         1.2.0     2026-04-06 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

rstudioapi    0.18.0    2026-01-16 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

sass          0.4.10    2025-04-11 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

sessioninfo   1.2.4     2026-06-04 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.1)

shiny       * 1.10.0    2024-12-14 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

tibble        3.3.1     2026-01-11 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

usethis       3.2.1     2025-09-06 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.1)

vctrs         0.7.3     2026-04-11 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)

xtable        1.8-8     2026-02-22 [1] CRAN (R 4.6.0)