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Thread: Accesskeys (again??) (was RE: Physically Challenged Web Page Access)
Number of posts in this thread: 12 (In chronological order)
From: John Foliot - WATS.ca
Date: Wed, May 04 2005 1:47PM
Subject: Accesskeys (again??) (was RE: Physically Challenged Web Page Access)
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Christian Heilmann wrote:
>>
>> The things you can do as a designer is to make sure none of your web
>> site elements are dependent on a mouse (this rules out CSS only
>> dropdown menus, for example), ensure a logical tab order and add
>> accesskeys to reach the different sections of the site, and there is a
>> standard for that: http://www.clagnut.com/blog/193/
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Spreading false information is worse than saying nothing at all. There are
no *STANDARDS* regarding accesskeys, and in fact there are many, many
reasons for not using them. Richard Rutter is a prolific writer and
generally a fair advocate of accessible design, but his "take" on accesskeys
is flawed, and his opinion is no more of a standard than mine or your
opinion.
For the last 2 years now, we have written (ad naseum) about the pitfalls of
using accesskeys, and why we specifically advocate *NOT* using them. Start
here, and follow all of the related links:
Using Accesskeys - Is It Worth it?: http://wats.ca/articles/accesskeys/19
More reasons why we don't use accesskeys:
http://wats.ca/articles/accesskeyconflicts/37
Accesskeys and Reserved Keystroke Combinations:
http://wats.ca/resources/accesskeysandkeystrokes/38
Link Relationships as an Alternative to Accesskeys:
http://wats.ca/articles/accesskeyalternatives/52
The Future of Accesskeys: http://wats.ca/articles/thefutureofaccesskeys/66
I implore all readers and posters to this list to ensure that their
statements are in fact correct - and post URLs to support claims and
assertations. Numerous readers lurk here in an attempt to learn, and
teaching them "bad information" does all a dis-service.
JF
--
John Foliot = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Web Accessibility Specialist / Co-founder of WATS.ca
Web Accessibility Testing and Services
http://www.wats.ca
Phone: 1-613-267-1983 / 1-866-932-4878 (North America)
From: Christian Heilmann
Date: Wed, May 04 2005 1:57PM
Subject: Re: Accesskeys (again??) (was RE: Physically Challenged Web Page Access)
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>>The things you can do as a designer is to make sure none of your web
>>> > site elements are dependent on a mouse (this rules out CSS only
>>> > dropdown menus, for example), ensure a logical tab order and add
>>> > accesskeys to reach the different sections of the site, and there is a
>>> > standard for that: http://www.clagnut.com/blog/193/
>
>>
>> NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>>
>> Spreading false information is worse than saying nothing at all. There are
>> no *STANDARDS* regarding accesskeys, and in fact there are many, many
>> reasons for not using them. Richard Rutter is a prolific writer and
>> generally a fair advocate of accessible design, but his "take" on accesskeys
>> is flawed, and his opinion is no more of a standard than mine or your
>> opinion.
Hence you _can_ do. Granted, I forgot to mention the pitfalls, but
that is because I am sick of repeating them. I work a lot with local
government sites here in the UK and accesskeys are a _mandatory
element_ for them to be deemed accessible by their own standards (and
get a certification - which means nothing but they need it).
However, at least accesskeys are native to HTML, whereas an own DHTML
keyboard navigation, as hinted by the original email, is even more
dangerous.
>> For the last 2 years now, we have written (ad naseum) about the pitfalls of
>> using accesskeys, and why we specifically advocate *NOT* using them. Start
>> here, and follow all of the related links:
>>
>> Using Accesskeys - Is It Worth it?: http://wats.ca/articles/accesskeys/19
>> More reasons why we don't use accesskeys:
>> http://wats.ca/articles/accesskeyconflicts/37
>> Accesskeys and Reserved Keystroke Combinations:
>> http://wats.ca/resources/accesskeysandkeystrokes/38
>> Link Relationships as an Alternative to Accesskeys:
>> http://wats.ca/articles/accesskeyalternatives/52
To the last article: One reader of my article on LINKs
(http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dynanav/) pointed out that if can
be dangerous to overdo them aswell, as they do get rendered as a list
of links at the beginning of the document, and there is no way to
offer a skip over them.
All we can do is try to do the right thing, one browser or another UA
will annoy us :-)
-- Chris Heilmann
Blog: http://www.wait-till-i.com
Writing: http://icant.co.uk/
Binaries: http://www.onlinetools.org/
From: John Foliot - WATS.ca
Date: Wed, May 04 2005 2:35PM
Subject: Re: Accesskeys (again??) (was RE: Physically Challenged Web Page Access)
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Christian Heilmann wrote:
>>
>> Hence you _can_ do. Granted, I forgot to mention the pitfalls, but
>> that is because I am sick of repeating them. I work a lot with local
>> government sites here in the UK and accesskeys are a _mandatory
>> element_ for them to be deemed accessible by their own standards (and
>> get a certification - which means nothing but they need it).
Right, but that is a Government of UK "guideline"; which is, sadly, flawed.
To state that it is a "Standard" (such that it is universally agreed to and
supported) is just plain wrong. I personally lobbied the Gov. of Canada to
remove accesskeys from their published standards in 2001 and was successful
in getting them to do so
(www.cio-dpi.gc.ca/cioscripts/help/specs_e.asp?who=/clf-nsi/#Skip - "A
conflict has been identified between Access keys previously recommended for
use on Government of Canada sites and the proprietary assignment of Access
keys in commercially available software, therefore Access keys are not being
used."). If UK developers agree that their standard is flawed, it's up to
them to go to their government and say so.
>>
>>
>> To the last article: One reader of my article on LINKs
>> (http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dynanav/) pointed out that if can
>> be dangerous to overdo them as well, as they do get rendered as a list
>> of links at the beginning of the document, and there is no way to
>> offer a skip over them.
Yes, they do appear at the top of a document in browsers such as Lynx.
However, there is indeed a way to skip over them:
<link rel="home" href="index.php" title="Home" />
<link rel="bookmark" title="Page Content" href="#content" />
<link rel="bookmark" title="Site Navigation" href="#navcontainer" />
A recent discussion thread at the W3C-WAI Interest Group list discussed this
very issue.
(http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2005AprJun/thread.html -
"Skip links ARE a markup problem (was RE: Skip links should be a markup
problem)"
>>
>> All we can do is try to do the right thing, one browser or another UA
>> will annoy us :-)
Developing for specific browsers or UAs is a fools task - develop to
standards and let the tools work to the same standards.
JF
--
John Foliot = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Web Accessibility Specialist / Co-founder of WATS.ca
Web Accessibility Testing and Services
http://www.wats.ca
Phone: 1-613-267-1983 / 1-866-932-4878 (North America)
From: Christian Heilmann
Date: Wed, May 04 2005 2:46PM
Subject: Re: Accesskeys (again??) (was RE: Physically Challenged Web Page Access)
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>>> > To the last article: One reader of my article on LINKs
>>> > (http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dynanav/) pointed out that if can
>>> > be dangerous to overdo them as well, as they do get rendered as a list
>>> > of links at the beginning of the document, and there is no way to
>>> > offer a skip over them.
>
>>
>> Yes, they do appear at the top of a document in browsers such as Lynx.
>> However, there is indeed a way to skip over them:
>>
>> <link rel="home" href="index.php" title="Home" />
>> <link rel="bookmark" title="Page Content" href="#content" />
>> <link rel="bookmark" title="Site Navigation" href="#navcontainer" />
*doh* so easy, yet so daft of me not to think about that. Cheers for
setting m straight.
>> A recent discussion thread at the W3C-WAI Interest Group list discussed this
>> very issue.
>> (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2005AprJun/thread.html -
>> "Skip links ARE a markup problem (was RE: Skip links should be a markup
>> problem)"
>>> > All we can do is try to do the right thing, one browser or another UA
>>> > will annoy us :-)
>
>>
>> Developing for specific browsers or UAs is a fools task - develop to
>> standards and let the tools work to the same standards.
Err.... accesskey is a valid attribute in the standard, and the only
problem with it is that UAs have their own keyboard shortcuts which
make it quite a task to find ones that make sense. Therefore
developers following a standard do nothing wrong, the real world
implementation is where it fails.
That leaves us with the question who is wrong? The standard body,
assuming that UAs won't need all keyboard shortcuts or the UA
developers, implementing them?
I'd say both, as the accesskey attribute should have gotten a range of
valid values which would have been illegal for the UAs to use.
-- Chris Heilmann
Blog: http://www.wait-till-i.com
Writing: http://icant.co.uk/
Binaries: http://www.onlinetools.org/
From: John Foliot - WATS.ca
Date: Wed, May 04 2005 3:08PM
Subject: Re: Accesskeys (again??) (was RE: Physically Challenged Web Page Access)
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Christian Heilmann wrote:
>>
>> Err.... accesskey is a valid attribute in the [Current - JF] standard, and
the only
>> problem with it is that UAs have their own keyboard shortcuts which
>> make it quite a task to find ones that make sense. Therefore
>> developers following a standard do nothing wrong, the real world
>> implementation is where it fails.
Here we agree. The problem is, as you have stated, finding viable
accesskeys which do not impede or conflict with previously used keystroke
combos. One of my credos is "do no harm", and as such, since there is no
consensus on fixed accesskeys, more sites don't have them than do, etc.
etc., I simply do not use them.
The hypothetical users who might benefit from accesskeys sadly have found
alternative methods of navigating their sites, as the expectation that
accesskeys exist is non-existent; most mainstream sites simply do not bother
anyway, so the end users don't bother looking for them - never mind learn
the particular sites flavor of usage, etc. when they do exist.
>> That leaves us with the question who is wrong? The standard body,
>> assuming that UAs won't need all keyboard shortcuts or the UA
>> developers, implementing them?
>> I'd say both, as the accesskey attribute should have gotten a range of
>> valid values which would have been illegal for the UAs to use.
Again, I don't disagree, and apparently neither does the W3C, who appear to
be quietly deprecating ACCESSKEY in favor of ACCESS in XHTML 2, and a scheme
where-by the ACCESS attribute has a series of pre-defined values, but leaves
the mapping mechanism to the end user/user agent
(http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-xhtml2-20040722/). This makes infinitely more
sense, as the end user will always know that Ctrl+<foo> will take them to
the Search, or Nav, or Help, or what-have-you. (More details in our article
- The Future of Accesskeys -
http://wats.ca/articles/thefutureofaccesskeys/66)
JF
--
John Foliot = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Web Accessibility Specialist / Co-founder of WATS.ca
Web Accessibility Testing and Services
http://www.wats.ca
Phone: 1-613-267-1983 / 1-866-932-4878 (North America)
From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Thu, May 05 2005 8:09AM
Subject: Re: Accesskeys (again??) (was RE: Physically Challenged Web Page Access)
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>> <link rel="home" href="index.php" title="Home" />
>>> > <link rel="bookmark" title="Page Content" href="#content" />
>>> > <link rel="bookmark" title="Site Navigation"
>
>> href="#navcontainer"
>
>>> > />
Can you explain this a bit more? What is the advantage of using the LINK tag
vs. creating an actual set of href tags at the top of your HTML?
-Darrel
From: ben morrison
Date: Thu, May 05 2005 8:18AM
Subject: Re: Accesskeys (again??) (was RE: Physically Challenged Web Page Access)
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> Can you explain this a bit more? What is the advantage of using the LINK tag
>> vs. creating an actual set of href tags at the top of your HTML?
I'm curious as well, since the majority of browsers do not support
this and the current method for skipLinks using css to hide them
offscreen seems to work.
ben
From: Christian Heilmann
Date: Thu, May 05 2005 8:18AM
Subject: Re: Accesskeys (again??) (was RE: Physically Challenged Web Page Access)
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On 5/5/05, Austin, Darrel < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>>>> > > <link rel="home" href="index.php" title="Home" />
>>>> > > <link rel="bookmark" title="Page Content" href="#content" />
>>>> > > <link rel="bookmark" title="Site Navigation"
>>
>>> > href="#navcontainer"
>>
>>>> > > />
>
>>
>> Can you explain this a bit more? What is the advantage of using the LINK tag
>> vs. creating an actual set of href tags at the top of your HTML?
Link tags are supposed to define the document relationship, not
replace hyperlinks. If you see a webpage as a page of a book, the LINK
tags would be the staples, whereas A elements are references in the
text.
The practical upshot is that some browsers prefetch pages linked via LINK.
http://www.wats.ca/articles/accesskeyalternatives/52
-- Chris Heilmann
Blog: http://www.wait-till-i.com
Writing: http://icant.co.uk/
Binaries: http://www.onlinetools.org/
From: Christian Heilmann
Date: Thu, May 05 2005 8:23AM
Subject: Re: Accesskeys (again??) (was RE: Physically Challenged Web Page Access)
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On 5/5/05, ben morrison < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>> > Can you explain this a bit more? What is the advantage of using the LINK tag
>
>>> > vs. creating an actual set of href tags at the top of your HTML?
>
>>
>> I'm curious as well, since the majority of browsers do not support
>> this and the current method for skipLinks using css to hide them
>> offscreen seems to work.
Chicken and Egg.
The problem I pointed out is that some user agents DO show or render
out the LINKs before the main content. This means that a LYNX user for
example will get all the relational links to tab through before
reaching the content.
In your document you'll still need to use normal skip links to avoid
repetitive parts - or simply structure your document that the content
comes first.
As to the current method of hiding skip links - it is based on the
false assumption that only blind users can benefit from skip links.
You can hide them and show them onfocus, but that can become quite
annoying.
-- Chris Heilmann
Blog: http://www.wait-till-i.com
Writing: http://icant.co.uk/
Binaries: http://www.onlinetools.org/
From: John Foliot - WATS.ca
Date: Thu, May 05 2005 8:36AM
Subject: Re: Accesskeys (again??) (was RE: Physically Challenged Web Page Access)
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Austin, Darrel wrote:
>>>>>> <link rel="home" href="index.php" title="Home" />
>>>>>> <link rel="bookmark" title="Page Content" href="#content" />
>>>>>> <link rel="bookmark" title="Site Navigation"
>>>>>> href="#navcontainer" />
>
>>
>> Can you explain this a bit more? What is the advantage of
>> using the LINK tag
>> vs. creating an actual set of href tags at the top of your HTML?
>>
Darrel,
*Advantage*? Right now, there is minimal advantage to using this, although
I believe in doing things "right". If/when user agents support relative
links properly it will be a real boon. Think beyond Internet Explorer and
Firefox to PDAs and other handhelds, embedded apps, etc. Providing meta
data such as this in theory can be exploited by these tools to the end user
advantage.
We've written about the relative link at WATS.ca:
http://www.wats.ca/articles/missinglink/49
HTH
JF
--
John Foliot = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Web Accessibility Specialist / Co-founder of WATS.ca
Web Accessibility Testing and Services
http://www.wats.ca
Phone: 1-613-267-1983 / 1-866-932-4878 (North America)
From: Bryce Fields
Date: Thu, May 05 2005 2:07PM
Subject: Re: Accesskeys (again??) (was RE: Physically Challenged Web Page Access)
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On 5/5/05, John Foliot - WATS.ca < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>> Austin, Darrel wrote:
>
>>>>> >>> <link rel="home" href="index.php" title="Home" />
>>>>> >>> <link rel="bookmark" title="Page Content" href="#content" />
>>>>> >>> <link rel="bookmark" title="Site Navigation"
>>>>> >>> href="#navcontainer" />
>>
>>> >
>>> > Can you explain this a bit more? What is the advantage of
>>> > using the LINK tag
>>> > vs. creating an actual set of href tags at the top of your HTML?
>>> >
>
>>
>> Darrel,
>>
>> *Advantage*? Right now, there is minimal advantage to using this, although
>> I believe in doing things "right". If/when user agents support relative
>> links properly it will be a real boon. Think beyond Internet Explorer and
>> Firefox to PDAs and other handhelds, embedded apps, etc. Providing meta
>> data such as this in theory can be exploited by these tools to the end user
>> advantage.
Just a personal note. Well spoken. :-)
-- Bryce Fields, Webmaster
Where I Work: Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education
Where I Play: www.royalrodent.com
"Do or do not! There is no try!" -- Yoda
From: John Foliot - WATS.ca
Date: Wed, May 11 2005 8:08AM
Subject: Re: Accesskeys (again??) (was RE: Physically Challenged Web Page Access)
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Terrence Wood wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> The accesskeys work fine for me (macos x), of course you
>> still have the
>> issue of accesskeys being invisible in a visual browser, although the
>> use of the title attribute goes some way towards addressing that.
>>
To long time list members... No, I will not give up <grin>
Peter,
The debate on the pros and cons of accesskeys is, by now, well documented.
While there *are* arguments for using them, on balance I believe that they
can in fact cause more harm than good, and say so every chance I get (as the
above sentence indicates). Should you care, we have written extensively on
the topic at WATS.ca. I urge you to at the very least give the arguments
some consideration:
Using Accesskeys - Is it worth it?:
http://www.wats.ca/articles/accesskeys/19
More reasons why we don't use accesskeys:
http://www.wats.ca/articles/accesskeyconflicts/37
Accesskeys and Reserved Keystroke Combinations:
http://www.wats.ca/resources/accesskeysandkeystrokes/38
Link Relationships as an Alternative to Accesskeys:
http://www.wats.ca/articles/accesskeyalternatives/52
The Future of Accesskeys:
http://www.wats.ca/articles/thefutureofaccesskeys/66
Cheers!
JF
--
John Foliot = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Web Accessibility Specialist / Co-founder of WATS.ca
Web Accessibility Testing and Services
http://www.wats.ca
Phone: 1-613-267-1983 / 1-866-932-4878 (North America)