What methods exist to ensure accessibility for infinite content scrolling on web pages?

Infinite content scrolling improves usability for most users, but creates significant challenges for people using keyboard navigation or screen readers. The main difficulty is that the user's focus can unexpectedly shift or be lost when new portions of data are automatically loaded during page scrolling.

To make infinite scrolling accessible, it is recommended to provide the user with an alternative in the form of classic pagination with a button to load the next batch of content. The Load More button gives full control over the information retrieval process and allows the user to independently decide when to move on to new blocks of data.

If automatic content loading is a mandatory design requirement, it is necessary to use live regions via the aria-live attribute with the value polite. This allows programmatically notifying screen reader users that new items have been successfully added to the page without interrupting their current work and without knocking focus off the current control element.

It is also critically important to ensure that keyboard focus remains predictable. When adding new items, focus must not be automatically transferred to them, as this disorients the user. Focus should remain on the control element the user was interacting with, allowing them to smoothly continue navigation as needed.