Is there any way in HTML to tell the browser not to allow tab indexing on particular elements?
On my page though there is a sideshow which is rendered with jQuery, when you tab through that, you get a lot of tab presses before the tab control moves to the next visible link on the page as all the things being tabbed through are hidden to the user visually.
You can use tabindex="-1".
Only do this if you are certain it does not remove functionality for keyboard users.
The W3C HTML5 specification supports negative tabindex values:
If the value is a negative integer
The user agent must set the element's tabindex focus flag, but should not allow the element to be reached using sequential focus navigation.
Watch out though that this is a HTML5 feature and might not work with old browsers.
To be W3C HTML 4.01 standard (from 1999) compliant, tabindex would need to be positive.
Sample usage below in pure HTML.
<a href="#" onclick="return false">Focusable</a>
<a tabindex="-1" href="#" onclick="return false">Not focusable</a>
<a href="#" onclick="return false">Focusable</a>