Accessible Drag and Drop FAQ

kynthia
  • Updated

We’re constantly working to improve Discord for everyone that uses it—no matter how they use it. 

What this article covers:

How to Drag and Drop

Alongside Drag and Drop, we also have a new Text-to-Speech Rate Slider available.

For years, you could drag and drop everything from server collections, channels, and roles using your mouse. However, this wasn’t optimal for those that would like another way to perform these same actions. That being said, Discord now has Accessible Drag & Drop available, which allows you to perform actions to sort and organize a variety of things within the platform - all from your keyboard.

a11y_server.gif

The drag and drop function is currently available on our desktop and browser clients.

As mentioned above, instead of solely relying on your mouse to rearrange and organize a variety of things on Discord, you can use the following actions to drag and drop certain items using your keyboard. To do so:

  • Press on the server or the channel that you would like to drag and drop, which you can find in the left-hand panel server list or the channel list of a server.
  • Press Ctrl + D/Cmd + D to select that item and lift it from its original position.
  • Use the Up and Down arrows again to move the item into the desired position which will be indicated by a green dot or line.
  • Press on the Spacebar or Enter key to drop the item into its position.
  • You can also press on the Esc key to cancel the drag and drop action for that item.

Open-Source Drag and Drop

We’ve open-sourced Drag and Drop! If you’re a developer, you can utilize and customize our Drag and Drop features in your projects! Check out Drag and Drop on GitHub here: https://github.com/discord/react-dnd-accessible-backend

Troubleshooting JAWS screen-reader on Windows

Not hearing any drag-and-drop updates while using JAWS on Windows? JAWS may block in-app announcements.

If you are using JAWS 2022 (version 2022.2206.9 or later) or 2023, then:

  • Open JAWS
  • Go to Utilities > Settings Center
  • Select “Discord” in the list of Application combo box. This will ensure that any settings changes only apply to the Discord app
  • Search for “Announce Live Region Updates"
  • Ensure the “Announce Live Region Updates” checkbox is checked. You may need to uncheck the checkbox, apply the changes, and then re-check the checkbox
  • Restart Discord

If you are on an earlier version of JAWS without the “Announce Live Region Updates” setting and you are not hearing the announcements, then you may need to do one of the following:

  • Upgrade JAWS
  • Switch to NVDA
  • Use JAWS with the browser version of Discord (in Chrome, Edge, or Firefox) where announcements are not blocked

Have Questions or Feedback?

We hope this update improves your Discord experience and if you would like to give our Accessibility team live feedback, please fill out this form: https://dis.gd/a11y. 

If you have any additional questions, please reach out to our support team here: https://dis.gd/contact or Tweet at us @discord_support!

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