Press NVDA+8 until you hear: "Automatically set system focus to
focusable elements off". I suspect you have it on, and wyhat you're
observing is these focus events that NVDA handles by switching you to
focus mode. IIRC this problem is indeed more severe in Firefox as echo
focus messages are coming with a longer delay.
Another option is to try Chrome - in my experience Chrome sends echo
focus messages with lower delay and depending on how fast you type, it
might  mitigate your problem eitehr completely or to some extent.
The third option is to install BrowserNav add-on and configure on these
websites to ignore focus event.
HTH
--Tony


On 1/14/2023 1:13 PM, Bhavya shah wrote:

Dear all,

I am using Firefox version 108.0.2 and NVDA version 2022.4. This is
not a new issue, but has been cropping up in my workflow more
frequently of late. On many webpages (placing an order on DoorDash,
LinkedIn Messaging, and many others), especially when ample form
controls are present, NVDA’s focus jumps around a fair bit and often
goes into focus mode. (I will note here that Automatic focus mode for
focus changes is enabled in Browse Mode settings and I would prefer
to not disable that to suppress the latter issue.) Based on my
understanding of NVDA, arrowing around or pressing single-letter
navigation keys (say 'e' for edit field) should not trigger focus
mode; but it frequently does, needing me to keep switching back to
browse mode in addition to correcting for NVDA’s focus bouncing
around.

Is this a known issue? Do others experience this on the web? Are there
known work-arounds?

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions and inputs.

Kind Regards,
Bhavya Shah
B.S. in Mathematical and Computational Science | Stanford '24
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhavyashah125/