What Happens When a Modal Dialog Has No Focus Trap
A modal dialog opens over a page, but Tab isn't constrained to stay within it. A keyboard user keeps pressing Tab and their focus silently walks out of the dialog into page content sitting behind the overlay, some of it visually hidden underneath it.
What's the concrete consequence of this missing focus trap?
The correct answer is "The user loses track of where focus went and can't easily recover."
Without a focus trap, Tab silently walks focus out of the dialog and into page content behind it, which may be visually hidden under the overlay — leaving a keyboard user unable to tell where focus went or how to get back to the dialog they were just interacting with. A keyboard or screen-reader user who loses track of focus has effectively lost the interface, even though it's still fully rendered on screen.
The modal doesn't close automatically just because focus left it — it stays open, compounding the confusion. Nothing about a missing focus trap triggers a page reload. Screen readers don't announce an automatic error either; the failure is silent, which is what makes it dangerous.
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