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feat: add keyboard shortcuts and accessibility navigation support #803

Description

@vikrantkulkarni07

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

CommitPulse is an interactive developer-focused platform where users frequently navigate between repositories, contribution insights, analytics dashboards, profile sections, activity feeds, and interactive UI components.

Currently, most interactions rely primarily on mouse-based navigation, which can reduce efficiency for keyboard-first users and create accessibility limitations for users who depend on keyboard navigation.

This creates a few usability challenges:

  • Frequent users must repeatedly switch between keyboard and mouse for navigation.
  • Keyboard-only users have limited interaction efficiency.
  • Modals and interactive components could benefit from improved keyboard accessibility.
  • There is currently no discoverable keyboard shortcuts system for power users.
  • Navigation across dashboards and repositories can become slower during repeated workflows.

As CommitPulse is a productivity-oriented developer platform, adding keyboard accessibility and shortcut support would significantly improve usability, accessibility, and overall user experience.

Describe the solution you'd like

I would like to propose adding global keyboard shortcuts and accessibility-focused keyboard interaction support across the platform.

Proposed Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut | Action -- | -- Shift + / or ? | Open keyboard shortcuts help modal Esc | Close active modal/dialog / | Focus search input Ctrl + K | Open quick navigation / command palette g + h | Navigate to Home g + d | Navigate to Dashboard g + r | Navigate to Repositories g + p | Navigate to Profile

Accessibility Improvements

  • Prevent shortcuts while typing inside:

    • input

    • textarea

    • select

    • contenteditable fields

  • Better keyboard focus management for modals/dialogs

  • Improved keyboard navigation for interactive cards/components

  • Accessible labels for icon-only buttons

  • Discoverable keyboard shortcuts help modal

  • Keyboard activation support for custom interactive elements

Proposed Implementation

  • Centralized keyboard event handling system

  • Accessible modal handling

  • Focus management using refs

  • Command palette / quick navigation support

  • Keyboard navigation enhancements for interactive UI sections

This would align CommitPulse with modern productivity-focused web applications like GitHub, Notion, and VS Code while improving accessibility and navigation efficiency.

Describe alternatives you've considered

An alternative approach could be implementing only minimal keyboard navigation using native browser tab navigation.

However, a centralized keyboard shortcuts and accessibility system would provide a significantly better developer experience, especially for frequent users and keyboard-first workflows.

Another alternative could be limiting shortcuts only to search/navigation, but implementing a more complete accessibility-focused interaction system would make the platform more scalable and user-friendly in the long term.

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