How to select an item which isn't "tabbable" using keyboard?

[aorsten]

I am implementing a react-select Multi-Select with dnd-sortable items. The entire select can be "tabbed" into, but we do not want each and every item within the select to be tabbable (and I suppose thus not focusable).

Example: https://react-select.com/advanced#sortable-multiselect (this example uses react-sortable-hoc, which is how I got into dnd-kit)

react-select exposes arrow functionality to select an item for deletion, e.g. click arrowLeft and then Delete to delete a certain item. I want to modify this so that "arrow-focusing" an item makes that item focused with dnd-sortable. If I am able to set an item as the current focused element in dnd-kit, I would expect to be able to press Space or Enter to select that item, and move it around with left or right arrows.

So - if I know which item is "focused" by react-select, can I somehow pass that to the KeyboardSensor or similar, allowing me to keyboard-drag that item?

Edit: I have made the drag-and-drop functionality work, so I only struggle with keyboard accessibility here.