A larger discussion was had in the Hallway Hangout on improving accessibility in the Site Editor that I wanted to bring into GitHub to continue talking through. At the simplest, the core takeaway was how we could consider the combination of using List View and evolving Focus Mode on more container blocks in #45264 could perhaps allow for consolidating and deprecating other tools, like navigation and edit mode first introduced in Gutenberg 6.3.

@alexstine doesn’t like the different modes and finds List View is easier to work with partially because you don’t know where to navigate around in the canvas otherwise with the keyboard. It’s very unpredictable what direction you will be traveling based on what you select. Right now, we’re in a situation where we have too many ways to move around: arrow keys in the canvas, have an edit mode, have a navigation mode, have list view. Can we consolidate? @afercia added context that edit and navigation mode were done when there were no inner blocks. It was a way to simplify navigation between blocks but the structure of the blocks was way simpler. This led to a broader discussion around showing List View for individual blocks, similar to what’s been done with the Navigation block, where you can only see the “tree” of that specific block with the inner blocks. @joen jumped in to talk about design explorations on exactly that where you can use a “focus mode” to zoom in on just that part of the page and have List View for just that part of the system.

What can be done today to take us in that direction? What risks are there? What improvements might be needed to List View to make it more useful from an accessibility point of view? Let's discuss here! I'd also like to hold a future hallway hangout on the topic as more of a working session to see what progress can be made.

@WordPress/gutenberg-design @alexstine @afercia @joedolson