WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Keyboard short cuts and access keys.

for

From: Ramya Sethuraman
Date: Sep 24, 2012 7:31AM


Thanks Deborah, that helps. So using accesskeys to enhance accessibility
seems to be the best way to go for keyboard only users.

Ramya

On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 10:10 PM, < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> 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
> > > >



--
*I also exist @: http://www.ramyasethuraman.com*