E-mail List Archives
Thread: RE: Access Keys - your collective help is urgently requested!
Number of posts in this thread: 2 (In chronological order)
From: Jukka Korpela
Date: Fri, Sep 13 2002 6:31AM
Subject: RE: Access Keys - your collective help is urgently requested!
No previous message | Next message →
John Foliot wrote:
> - -a large group of institutional developers have
> been recommended to implement a series of "Standardized" Access Keys
> assigned to "Skip Nav" functionality across multiple web
> sites. - - they have recommended
> the use of "Alt+1" and "Alt+2". Users of IBM's Home Page Reader may
> recognise these as being "Alt+1 = Headings Reading Mode" and
> "Alt+2 = Text View".
This is a mess.
> It's a mess.
It's a frustrating mess.
I had thought, and the consensus of some discussion has been, as far as I
know, that using digit keys as access keys is the safest way to avoid
clashes with browsers' built-in shortcuts. I had even documented and
recommended such usage:
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/forms/accesskey.html#assign
I hadn't used IBM HPR enough to have noted the problem. How serious is it in
practice? How often are those shortcuts used, and are there alternative ways
of doing what they do?
> Current thinking is to move to "Alt+X", Alt+Y" and Alt+Z"
I'm afraid any letters as access keys are reserved by one or (probably) more
programs for some use. But if you're going to use letters, then those
letters at the end of the English alphabet presumably have less use than
others, just because it's more difficult to treat them as mnemonic in any
way. (Well, X could be eXit, Y might be Yank, Z might be Zoom. Actually,
Opera seems to use Alt+X and Alt+Z for moving within the history list; don't
ask me why.)
It is virtually impossible to test all the browsers, since the shortcut
assignments vary even between different language versions. And it is not
sufficient to consider shortcuts in assistive technology. The great majority
of users use browsers that have some support to access keys, and this means
that some built-in shortcuts will be overridden _without the users even
knowing_ before they try to use some shortcut they are familiar with and
observing something strange.
For "Skip Nav", are access keys needed at all? Isn't it sufficient that
there is a link to the start of the main content, or otherwise past the
navigation? It could be a "visually hidden" link, i.e. a transparent
single-pixel GIF with something like
alt="Main content of the page."
Such links have their problems, but I'd say that they are, as a whole, more
tolerable than the harmful side effects of access keys.
--
Jukka Korpela, senior adviser
TIEKE Finnish Information Society Development Centre
http://www.tieke.fi/
Diffuse Business Guide to Web Accessibility and Design for All:
http://www.diffuse.org/accessibility.html
----
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/
From: John Foliot - bytown internet
Date: Fri, Sep 13 2002 7:00AM
Subject: RE: Access Keys - your collective help is urgently requested!
← Previous message | No next message
> I had thought, and the consensus of some discussion has been, as far as I
> know, that using digit keys as access keys is the safest way to avoid
> clashes with browsers' built-in shortcuts. I had even documented and
> recommended such usage:
> http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/forms/accesskey.html#assign
Thanks Jukka, I'll pass this link on to the client.
> I hadn't used IBM HPR enough to have noted the problem. How
> serious is it in
> practice? How often are those shortcuts used, and are there
> alternative ways
> of doing what they do?
No, they override the coded ACCESSKEY attribute, but since the Skip Nav
function aids the visually impaired the most (not exclusively, just the
most), having it paired with non-functioning accesskeys (and even going so
far as to telling users what they are) is just hopeless... <sigh>
>
> > Current thinking is to move to "Alt+X", Alt+Y" and Alt+Z"
>
> I'm afraid any letters as access keys are reserved by one or
> (probably) more
> programs for some use.
It's appearing that X,Y and Z may in fact not be viable. Perhaps Alt+7,
Alt+8, Alt+9 (and after reading your page) Alt+0="Accessibility Features on
this site"
>
> For "Skip Nav", are access keys needed at all? Isn't it sufficient that
> there is a link to the start of the main content, or otherwise past the
> navigation? It could be a "visually hidden" link, i.e. a transparent
> single-pixel GIF with something like
> alt="Main content of the page."
> Such links have their problems, but I'd say that they are, as a
> whole, more
> tolerable than the harmful side effects of access keys.
The intent here is to actually assign Accesskeys to 3 "hidden" skip nave
functions...
JF
----
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/