Add Arrow-Key Shortcuts to a Confirmation Dialog Without Breaking Accessibility

Two buttons in a confirmation dialog look simple: Cancel and Confirm. Keyboard behavior makes the component a small state machine. A recent MonkeyCode change gives us a concrete example. Issue #862 and PR #863 add these shortcuts to the slash-command confirmation: ArrowLeft -> focus Cancel ArrowRight -> focus Confirm The reviewed implementation at commit c58bcd4 moves focus through button refs. That is a useful extra interaction. It is not a replacement for the dialog's accessibility foundation. Keep the baseline first For an alert-style confirmation, users still need: an accessible name and description; focus moved inside when the dialog opens; Tab and Shift+Tab constrained to dialog controls; Escape to dismiss when cancellation is allowed; visible focus; focus returned to the trigger after close; actual buttons whose labels explain the actions. The WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices Alert Dialog Pattern describes the modal semantics and keyboard foundation. Left/right mapping is a product shortcut, not a required AlertDialog convention. That means we must not steal keys from the established behavior around it. Isolate the extra mapping The companion keyboard.mjs starts with a pure function: export function arrowAction ( key ) { if ( key === " ArrowLeft " ) return " cancel " ; if ( key === " ArrowRight " ) return " confirm " ; return null ; } The event handler ignores unrelated and modified keys: export function handleDialogArrow ( event , controls ) { const action = arrowAction ( event . key ); if ( ! action || event . altKey || event . ctrlKey || event . metaKey ) return false ; event . preventDefault (); controls [ action ]. focus (); return true ; } Notice what is absent: no handler for Tab , Shift+Tab , Escape , or Enter . The native <dialog> and buttons in the minimal demo retain their normal jobs. In a React component, use a well-tested modal/dialog primitive for focus containment and dismissal, then add this narrow handler to its content. A complete minimal dialo