screen reader: Cannot close TOC or get to navigation items

[GeorgeKerscher]

I have just installed alpha.1.13735910424. This version and a few recent versions display something I have not encountered before.

Pressing ctrl+shift+n opens the table of contents to my current location, which is correct behavior.

This is located below the main body of the content. I cannot close this toc. If I go to navigation with ctrl+n I am taken to the beginning of the TOC, which is open and I cannot close it. I do not know how to get past it to the bookmarks. In previous releases, I thought the navigation pain was above themain content. Pressing ctrl+n should take me to the navigation pain. If the TOC is open, I should be able to close it and move down to the other navigation items. I would hope that the position of the navigation would be consistent instead of showing up in different positions.
@nvdaes

[danielweck]

Hi George, the "escape" key closes the entire popup modal dialog, or you can tab into the close icon. That being said, some users have this popup dialog docked either left or right, so this navigation pane can be persistent (concurrently with the rest of the GUI) instead of temporary (modal dialog overlay).

When inside this navigation pane, there are GUI tabs, for TOC, landmarks, bookmarks, page list / goto page, annotations. etc.
I noticed that when I use a screen reader, as soon as a tab item is keyboard-focussed, its contents are immediately switched over to the selected tab. So instead of the regular screen reader previous/next key combos, I have to use the actual tab key to advance into the contents (such as the TOC tree, or the bookmarks list). Perhaps this is what you are referring to?

@panaC @arthur-lemeur is that the normal / standard behaviour of tab controls with the GUI library we are using? The tab headers ("onglets") immediately switch the tab contents, similar to radio buttons. In other applications I seem to remember being able to first settle the keyboard focus on a specific tab item, then on my command (e.g. enter or return) select this tab so that its contents switch over. This is the reason why I am forced to use the tab key with a screen reader, which is strange as normally the screen-reader's own previous/next hot keys are sufficient to explore the entire GUI.

[nvdaes]

In v3.2.0-alpha.1.13739406021, from the TOC, I press shift+h to navigate headings back, and when I find bookmarks I press enter to select it.
I think that a shortcut for bookmarks or to navigate back and down to select the different tabs would be appreciated.