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Re: Access Keys

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Mar 26, 2018 12:36PM

Well put.
ON a retail website or public facing site that users are not likely to
frequent, access keys are not required. Good keyboard accessibility,
skip links and smart use of navigation patterns such as accordions for
menus and other repeated content with a lot of focusable elements,
usually makes pages not just accessible but pretty usable with the
keyboard.
On pages that users use frequently, such as for work-based online
applications like spreadsheet applications, email, Twitter, Facebook
etc, implementing access keys for the most frequently performed
actions are keyboard usability improvements, not required for WCAG,
unless the access key is the only way to navigate to the page
component, and that is pretty close to being an accessibility vilation
anyway, not unless user can navigate out of it with the keyboard and
the navigation is clearly documented on the webpage.

The problem lies in discoverability. The accesskey attribute has
little to no discoverability in browsers. Screen readers announce them
but a screen reader user actually benefits a lot less from access keys
than e.g. users with mobility impairments.

so if your application is one where users log in and are likely to use
frequently, you may consider picking the top 3 or 4 tasks the users
are likely to perform and assign access keys to those. Then make sure
they are discoverable.
Make sure to limit access keys to 5 or less for an application and try
to pick keybord shortcuts that do not override native browser
shortcuts, e.g. "f" often overrides the shortcut for the file menu, at
least in IE (FF and Chrome us ctrl and alt as modifier keys for the
accesskey so conflicts are not common).



On 3/26/18, glen walker < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Do you need to implement the accesskey attribute in order to be
> accessible? No.
>
> However, I really like it when there are access keys for common
> functionality. The problem is that they're not normally discoverable. For
> example, on wikipedia, the search field that's in the upper right (when
> you're viewing a wiki page), has an accesskey='F', but you'd never know it
> unless you look at the code. It lets me quickly get to that field no
> matter where I am on the page, which I love, but again, you probably don't
> know it's there.
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 26, 2018 at 10:28 AM, Kakarla Meharoon <
> <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
>> *Is it access keys are really necessary to implement?*
>> >> >> >> >>
> > > > >


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