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Thread: RE: use of access keys (was: Next and Previous Accesskey)
Number of posts in this thread: 2 (In chronological order)
From: Karl Groves
Date: Tue, Oct 07 2003 6:46AM
Subject: RE: use of access keys (was: Next and Previous Accesskey)
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I think, as often happens, this discussion has degenerated into a discussion of accessibility for the blind.
Let's remember that users can have a variety of special needs, severities of those needs, and methods to overcome them.
The blind aren't the only people who can benefit from accesskeys. The problem, as I see it, is not only the reserved keys of a variety of possible user-agents but also OS as well.
Has anyone ever assembled a comprehensive list of reserved keys? Such a list would probably be invaluable in making a decision about what keys to use.
Karl L. Groves, Certified Master CIW Designer
E-Commerce Manager
NASA Federal Credit Union
500 Prince Georges Blvd.
Upper Marlboro, MD 20774
301-249-1800 ext.497
Fax: 301-390-4531
Opinions expressed in this e-mail represent only myself and are not in any way to be taken as the words or opinions of my employer.
>
From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Tue, Oct 07 2003 6:56AM
Subject: RE: use of access keys (was: Next and Previous Accesskey)
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On Tue, 7 Oct 2003, Karl Groves wrote:
> Has anyone ever assembled a comprehensive list of reserved keys?
The list is effectively the same as the list of characters that we could
possibly want to use. The conclusion is that, perhaps excluding special
cases (e.g. when the user community is known and limited), accesskey
attributes cause more harm than any good. People who are used to browsing
with keyboard shortcuts will be upset when, say, Alt S does not open the
favorites but does something quite different. (My point is that you cannot
possibly know the shortcut assignments, which depend on the language of
the browser's user interface. among other things.) For some details see
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/forms/accesskey.html
(which largely reflects my old, more optimistic attitude).
--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
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