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RE: use of access keys (was: Next and Previous Accesskey)

for

From: Eoin Campbell
Date: Oct 7, 2003 6:28AM

Thanks for all the great links people mentioned.
I was surprised at the broad agreement on 1 for Home and 0 for Access keys,
which is also what we decided.

John Foliot questioned the use of accesskeys at all,
which surprised me, at least. The two problems he mentioned are:
1. Some screen-reader applications use numeric accesskeys for other purposes.

Does anyone know what happens in this situation?
My understanding was that the screen-reader function would take priority,
and the access keys simply wouldn't work. If this is correct, then it doesn't
seem like a valid argument against ever using them.

2. No-one will remember the access key assignments

Most people will never use them, but again it seems a poor argument for
not including some access keys. If it costs nothing to have them defined
in the page template, and only a half-dozen people benefit greatly, it still
seems worthwhile to define some generic access keys.

It would not be worthwhile to individually design access key sets for
individual pages, or even whole sites.

The site http://www.culture.gov.uk/global/access_keys/default.htm
defines numeric access keys for generic pages (Home, Whats New, Site Map, etc.)
and this seems useful to me.
It also defines alphabetic access keys for different parts of the site,
and this seems less useful, except for people who might be constant heavy readers
of the site.


At 20:01 06/10/2003 -0600, John Foliot wrote:
>> We decided to use numbers rather than letters, to minimize conflicts with
>> browsers and screen-readers, and avoid language dependencies.
>
>Ouch!!!!
>
>Are you aware that these "Accesskeys" currently conflict with "reserved"
>keystroke combinations in at least two adaptive technology programs? For
>example, in IBM's HomePage Reader Alt + 1 starts "Heading reading mode"
>(reading only the headings on a page) whereas the entire range of numbers
>(Alt+1 through Alt+0) are "Reserved for User-defined windows" in GW Micro's
>WindowEyes. Remember as well, that with a program such as WindowEyes these
>keystrokes are available for more than just web surfing; they interact with
>any and all programs on the installed computer, allowing visually impaired
>users to operate word processors, spread sheet applications, etc. Given
>that fact, the program will over-ride any Accesskey you may have specified
>in your (x)HTML... rendering the operation non-functional - in other words
>"broken".
>
>One other thought to consider is how often do you anticipate repeat
>visitors, especially those who will bother enough to learn "your" standard
>implementation of Accesskeys? For while it may be "standard" on your
>site(s), the use of Accesskeys is non-standard across the entire web. Will
>visitors truly stop to learn (i.e. commit to memory) your Accesskeys on your
>site? To me it's a big stretch... (although I have not seen your site nor
>know anything about your user base).

--
Eoin Campbell, Technical Director, XML Workshop Ltd,
10 Greenmount Industrial Estate, Harolds Cross, Dublin 12, IRELAND.
Email: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Phone: +353 1 4547811; Fax: +353 1 4496299
Web: http://www.xmlw.ie
YAWC Online: http://www.yawconline.com/
YAWC Pro: http://www.yawcpro.com/



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