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Re: More data on accesskeys (New article written Nov. 1)

for

From: Joshue O Connor
Date: Nov 3, 2006 3:50AM

Thanks for that Alastair.

All the best

Josh

Alastair Campbell wrote:
> Josh wrote:
>> At the risk of upsetting a hornets nest here, can you please point to
>> any resources which indicate exactly what UA key combinations are
> mostly
>> effected by user defined access keys?
>
> There's a list of browser, OS & access technology keys here:
> http://www.wats.ca/show.php?contentid=43
>
> Colin wrote:
>> I would be curious to read about any user or users who either use the
>> feature or who have tried and found it unhelpful.
>
> There are some, you might find such a reply in the WAI-IG archive
> somewhere, but it is rare.
>
> When testing client sites with a variety of people with different
> abilities and access technologies, I've not found one who spontaneously
> used accesskeys when they were available.
>
> When asked after the tasks if they noticed the accesskeys or used them
> on other sites, replies varied between "what accesskeys", "what are
> accesskeys", and "yes, but I've never used them". Given the poor
> implementations both in browsers and in sites (e.g. one that gave
> 'helpful' hidden text that spelt them phonetically, but then they didn't
> work anyway), those type of results are hardly surprising.
>
> I'd love to make this sort of data available, but 1) It's confidential
> to each client, and 2) we asked out of curiosity, the tasks were to find
> or use things on the site. Accesskeys were not the focus, which I guess
> is quite realistic!
>
> I can see good uses for often used applications (e.g. intranet apps or
> webmail clients), but they would still have to be user defined. For
> general sites, the @role style methods are the way forward.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> -Alastair
>


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