Keyboard and Accessibility
The keys that work today, how focus and screen-reader support behave, and what reduced motion, contrast, and text sizing actually change.
This page lists the keys that are wired up right now, not the ones we would like to have. Below that: focus behaviour, what a screen reader hears, and the three settings that change how much you have to squint.
Throughout, Mod means Ctrl on Windows and Linux, Command on macOS.
Keys that work today
Anywhere in the workspace
/opens the search command menu. It stands down while you are typing in a field, a text area, or the composer, so a slash in a subject line stays a slash.
Calendar
tjumps to today,nstarts a new event.d,w,mswitch to day, week, or month.- Left and right arrows step by whichever unit the current view uses.
Escapecloses the event form and the detail popover.
Folder tree
- Up and down arrows move,
HomeandEndjump to the ends. - Right arrow expands a folder, left arrow collapses it.
EnterorSpaceopens the focused folder.
Message list
EnterorSpaceopens the focused message.
Composer
Mod+B,Mod+I,Mod+Ufor bold, italic, underline.Mod+Einline code,Mod+Shift+Xstrikethrough,Mod+Shift+Hhighlight.Mod+,subscript,Mod+.superscript,Mod+Alt+8code block.Mod+Enterbreaks out of the current block.
Dialogs and panels
Escapecloses. Inside a modal panel,TabandShift+Tabcycle within the panel instead of wandering into the page behind it.
Not wired up yet
PressedMail stores a named shortcut set per user (nineteen actions covering navigation, actions, composing and search, plus Gmail and Outlook presets) and serves it over the plugin REST API. The workspace does not read it yet. So j, k, o, r and e do nothing in the message list today, Ctrl+Enter does not send, and there is no help overlay listing them. Use the list above and nothing else.
Focus
Focused controls get a visible ring. PressedMail suppresses WordPress's own focus outline only for mouse clicks, so keyboard focus keeps its indicator where a click loses it.
The folder tree is a real tree with roving tab stops: one Tab reaches it, arrows move inside it. Every mobile screen starts with a Skip to content link that appears as soon as you Tab into it. The composer takes focus on the To field for a brand-new message and leaves it alone on a reply, so you land in the body where you were already going.
Screen readers
Message rows announce sender and subject together. Icon-only buttons carry either a translated label or hidden text, so a row of glyphs reads as Reply, Reply all, Forward, Archive, Delete.
Polite live regions announce the things that finish on their own: mailbox sync progress, composer status, whether settings saved, and the result of a calendar import. Errors use alert roles instead so they interrupt.
Reduced motion
There is no in-app toggle. PressedMail reads the operating system setting. Turn it on and every animation and transition in the plugin drops to effectively zero, including the dialogs, sheets, popovers and menus that render outside the plugin's own container, and the WordPress admin menu.
Contrast, text size, and density
- Contrast theme. Black and white with heavy borders. It ships in the Free build alongside the default palette, so you do not need a licence for it.
- Text size. Five baselines: Extra Small 16px, Small 18px (the default), Medium 20px, Large 22px, Extra Large 24px. Every text and icon size in the workspace is calculated from that one value, so nothing gets left behind.
- Density. Four message list densities: loose, comfortable (the default), compact, dense.
- Typeface. The Wired option is the dyslexia-friendly one.
Every palette is checked in light and dark by an automated test against 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for control boundaries and focus indicators. A palette that fails does not ship.