Move a card with the keyboard alone
Nothing on the board needs a pointer. Move the change request Repricing of commercial property after the 2025 flood season from Triage to In Progress using only the keyboard, and a screen reader narrates every step of it: pick-up, each move, the drop.
Before you start
These steps are for the Board view. The List view reorders from the keyboard as well, one row at a time through the whole list: Tab to the row, Space to pick it up, ↑ and ↓ to move it, Space again to drop it; see See everything the query returned, in one list. Like dragging, keyboard moving is unavailable in an As of snapshot. With a filter on it works, and the card lands by the same rule as a pointer drop: directly above the visible card below the slot, after any hidden cards between.
Steps
- Press Tab until the card itself has focus, meaning the whole card and not the title inside it.
- Press Space (or Enter) to pick it up. Announced: Picked up work
item {id}., with the card's own work item ID in place of
{id}. - Move with the arrow keys: ↑ and ↓ within the column, ← and → toward the neighboring columns. Every move is announced as Work item {id} is over {target}, where the target is the column name while the card is over a column, and that column followed by the other card's title while it is over another card: In Progress, Regulatory reporting: claims data extract. The column is always the one the board shows, so on a board with two columns over one state each of them is announced by its own name. On a board with swimlanes the target also names the row the card would move into, as in In Progress, in row Sprint 42.
- Press Space or Enter to drop. Announced: Work item {id} was dropped on {target}., naming the column the card lands in and, on a board with swimlanes, the row it moves into.
- To abandon the move instead, press Escape at any point: Dragging canceled. Work item {id} returned to its position. Nothing is written.
What you should see
The card lands where the announcements said it was, and the write is the same one a pointer drag makes: moving to another column writes the state, moving inside a column writes the order field. The column counts change immediately; nothing about the result is a keyboard-only variant.
Notes
Pick-up is armed only while the card itself has focus, which is what keeps the controls inside a card usable: Space on a checklist checkbox ticks the task and Enter on the card title opens the work item form, instead of starting a drag. The short instruction a screen reader reads when a card takes focus ("To pick up a draggable item, press the space bar…") comes from the drag library, so its wording is not ours.
A screen reader names each card as a work item card, draggable. In an As of snapshot, where no card can be picked up, it names the card as a work item card and leaves the pick-up instruction out. Tab still reaches the card, and the title inside it still opens the work item form.