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Re: Keyboard short cuts and access keys.

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From: deborah.kaplan@suberic.net
Date: Sep 23, 2012 8:10PM

Capturing keystrokes for webapps, unless very carefully done, can be dreadful for keyboard users, who usually have every key on their keyboards used in order to be webusers at all. For example, as a keyboard user I find I can't use rememberthemilk.com at ALL, because so many of the keys I use simply to manipulate a browser are overriden by the app. Even on a smaller scale, any number of websites capture, say, the "/" key to mean "take the user to the in-app search field" --- which overrides Firefox's use of the "/" key as a browser search shortcut.

So if you do it, make absolutely sure you aren't overriding keys that are meaningful in Opera, Safari, Firefox, IE, or Chrome.

-Deborah
--
Deborah Kaplan
Accessibility Team co-lead
Dreamwidth Studios LLC