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RE: Access keys, ie6

for

From: Philip Pawley
Date: Jan 22, 2002 9:37AM

Thanks for the response Paul,

>>> It would be good to have a consensus on some basic shortcuts.
>
>I agree. This would be ideal. No such standard exists however. This is one
>of the great downfalls of this technique. No one knows if the shortcuts are
>there, the shortcuts on each site are different, and, to be honest, even if
>you make the shortcuts visible in the page, so few people even know that it
>is *possible* to have keyboard shortcuts on a web page that they will most
>likely ignore the information or be confused by it.

Yes, but it doesn't matter if people who can manage very well with a mouse don't know. Those who need the shortcuts as an accessibility aid, would surely soon learn about standard shortcuts if they existed. Is this not something that could be suggested to someone at the W3C? Could they not make the necessary recommendations?



>>> While keyboard shortcuts work in Netscape 6, the TAB key doesn't (yet)
>
>The tab key works in Netscape 6.2, which I have on my computer. I am not a
>regular Netscape user, though, so you may know of some quirks which I do
>not.

I was testing with 6.0 and 6.2.1 but I downloaded 6.2 to check and (on my computer, with Windows 98SE) the TAB key still doesn't work) All it does is toggle the focus in and out of the browser window - and it doesn't even do that consistently. It doesn't even take the focus to the search box as happens in Opera 5 & 6. In contrast, the latest Mozilla tabs beautifully from link to link.



>I noticed that the letter L, which you use on your site, is unavailable when
>using IBM Home Page Reader, because that is the shortcut for "links
>reading mode."

Thanks for the tip: I've now replaced the L with 1.

>Paul Bohman
>Technology Coordinator
>WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind)
>www.webaim.org
>Utah State University
>www.usu.edu


--
Philip Pawley
Liverpool, UK
http://www.alexanderworks.org/
--






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