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Re: Accesskeys (again??) (was RE: Physically Challenged Web Page Access)

for

From: Christian Heilmann
Date: May 4, 2005 1:57PM

>>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/