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Re: accesskey

for

From: Léonie Watson
Date: Nov 9, 2010 7:27AM

"My experience says that use of access keys is fine unless it does not coinside with short-cuts of browsers, assistive technologies and operating systems."

This is technically the case, but I'm not sure it reflects the way blind/partially sighted people perceive accesskeys. We did a straw poll of members of the British Computer Association of the Blind a while back, and most people said they disliked accesskeys, and ignored them in favour of their screen reader's native link handling functionality.

Regards,
Léonie.

--
Nomensa - humanising technology

Léonie Watson | Director of Accessibility
t. +44 (0)117 929 7333


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Accessibility India
Sent: 09 November 2010 14:03
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] accesskey

Hi Bruna,

My experience says that use of access keys is fine unless it does not coinside with short-cuts of browsers, assistive technologies and operating systems. Generally developers take care of all these but let me quote an example where I have observed a coinside of accesskey of the website and short-cut of assistive technology.
In the website "www.mail.com, if you login you will have an link to calender. When we clikc on the calender we have options "Previous week and next week".
This options are provided with short-cuts "Previous week control + alt
+ page-up, Next week with control + alt + page down, where as same
short - cuts are used in JAWS (screen reader) for increasing and decreasing rate of speech speed.

Hope it helps.

On 11/9/10, <EMAIL REMOVED> < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> We use access keys on internal applications that people use
> frequently. That way they learn the access keys that they need. For
> externally facing sites we don't employ them due to the risk of
> overriding other keys. Internally we have full control over the
> browser, OS, and AT so we know which keys are still available.
>
> Mike Moore
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Bruna
> Poletto Salton
> Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2010 6:50 AM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] accesskey
>
> Thanks Denis.
>
> This actually helped a lot. We believe that the shortcuts are a good thing.
> All my blind co-workers really use them and expect that the website
> will provide shortcuts.
> But, there are some other people who think there's no need to offer
> shortcuts. So, we're still discussing about this issue. I think it's
> gonna take some time until we put a closure on this.
>
> Thanks a lot.
>
> Bruna Poletto Salton
> Projeto Acessibilidade Virtual da RENAPI | Núcleo Bento Gonçalves
> http://bento.ifrs.edu.br/acessibilidade
> (55)(54) 3455 3219
>
> On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 11:27 AM, Denis Boudreau
> < <EMAIL REMOVED> >wrote:
>
>> Hi Bruna,
>>
>> We've asked ourselves the same question as we were developing the
>> accessibility standards up north in Quebec[1]. Accesskey have always
>> been a matter of religion: people are usually either for or against
>> them.
>>
>> Given the discoverability issues related to accesskeys and the fact
>> that an organization just cannot expect its users to learn/remember
>> the special keys reserved on every website they visit, we decided
>> that accesskeys would not be allowed on public websites at all.
>>
>> However, on intranets or applications (where people were expected to
>> use them on a regular, if not daily basis), then accesskeys can
>> certainly prove useful because users might be tempted to learn and
>> remember them in order to improve their efficiency.
>>
>> Same logic went for multimedia players, because we expect to offer a
>> standardized player for every government agency or organization.
>> Relying on the same player and making sure it uses control keys can
>> and actually proves, to be useful.
>>
>> We recommended using the following, which have always been
>> consensually
>> approved:
>>
>> 1 = Homepage
>> 3 = Site map
>> 4 = Search
>> 9 = Contact Us
>> 0 = Accessibility
>> s = Skip link
>>
>> No recommendations were provided as of yet regarding a multimedia player.
>>
>> Hoping this helps.
>>
>> [1] http://www.msg.gouv.qc.ca/normalisation/standards/accessibilite/
>> --
>> Denis Boudreau
>> <EMAIL REMOVED>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 2010-11-05, at 8:52 AM, Bruna Poletto Salton wrote:
>>
>> > Hi everyone,
>> >
>> > I always read all the messages from this list, but this is the
>> > first time I'm actually asking something.
>> >
>> > I'm Brazilian and I'm working on the brazilian government
>> > accessibility guidelines. We are not really sure if we should
>> > recommend the use of accesskey in the brazilian government
>> > websites. Do people really use the given shortcuts? Do they really work well?
>> >
>> > Thanks!!
>> >
>> > --
>> > Bruna Poletto Salton
>> > Projeto Acessibilidade Virtual da RENAPI | Núcleo Bento Gonçalves
>> > (Virtual Accessibility Project)
>> > www.bento.ifrs.edu.br/acessibilidade
>> > (55) (54) 3455 3219
>> >