Carbon Design System

Modal

Stable
Feature flag
Last updated Sep 30, 2026
Carbon Core

    Modals focus the user’s attention exclusively on one task or piece of information by using a window that is displayed on top of the page content.

    Modal

    What Carbon provides

    Carbon bakes keyboard operation into its components, improving the experience of blind users and others who operate via the keyboard. Carbon incorporates many other accessibility considerations, some of which are described below.

    Keyboard interactions

    Modal dialogs take focus on appearance, and the tab order is constrained to the modal’s controls until the modal is closed by choosing one of the buttons with Enter or Space, or is dismissed by pressing Esc.

    illustration showing tab ring constrained within a modal with two buttons

    Keyboard navigation is constrained to the dialog. Tab cycles through the components that take focus.

    Esc closes a modal, while Space and Enter keys activate buttons

    The dialog is resolved by the user pressing Esc or activating a button.

    Focus handling

    When the dialog appears, the first item that gets focus depends on the type of dialog. Passive dialogs only contain a close button (X), so that takes focus. For dialogs which prompt for confirmation or user decision, the primary button takes focus (regardless of number of buttons). For destructive interactions, the “cancel” button takes focus, not the red danger/delete button. The tab order should proceed left and down from whichever item has focus then wrap back to the close button (X).

    initial focus in the dialog varies across four types of modals

    The first item with focus varies depending on dialog type.

    Design recommendations

    Designate the input that takes focus in a transactional modal

    The only time the starting focus would not be on a button is where a dialog contains input fields. For such transactional dialogs, designers should annotate that the first input field should receive focus. Note that text links are not considered a user input in this context.

    annotation on input says 'focus lands here when modal opens'

    Annotate the starting input that should take focus on a transactional dialog.

    annotation on link says 'focus lands here when modal opens'

    Do not give a link focus when a modal opens.

    Development considerations

    Keep these considerations in mind if you are modifying Carbon or creating a custom component.

    • Carbon assigns the container a role of “dialog” and sets aria-modal to "true".
    • The dialog is labelled via aria-label, using the same string used for the modal’s title; aria-labelledby could also be used to assign the title’s string.
    • See the modal pattern in the ARIA authoring practices for more considerations.

    Accessibility testing status

    Latest version: 1.114.0 | Framework: React (@carbon/react)

    ComponentAccessibility testStatusLink to source code
    ModalTest(s) that ensure the initial render state of a component is accessible.Passes all automated tests with no reported accessibility violations.GitHub link
    Tests that ensure additional states of the component are accessible. This could be interactive states of a component or its multiple variants.Automated or manual testing has been temporarily deferred.
    Tests that ensure focus is properly managed, and all interactive functions of a component have a proper keyboard-accessible equivalent.Passes all automated tests with no reported accessibility violations.
    This manual testing ensures that the visual information on the screen is properly conveyed and read correctly by screen readers such as JAWS, VoiceOver, and NVDA.A human has manually tested this component, e.g. screen reader testing.
    Learn more about tag and test meaningView all component accessibility status

    Feedback

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