Accessible Website Design :: Access Keys
Should we deploy website access keys?
Yes! The W3C recommends it!
25%
[ 8 ]
No! They cause too many problems!
58%
[ 18 ]
Don't know!
16%
[ 5 ]
Total Votes : 31
So the answer is no - then.
I'm thinking of removing them from my websites reintroduce them when I move to a more dynamic site, and so give users the opportunity to turn on and off accesskeys as they wish.
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An interesting article on the subject
http://www.nomensa.com/resources/articles/access-keys.html
If it can go wrong it will. So don't worry about it.
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I voted I don't know because I'm up the middle on the sublect. I believe that accesskeys could be very usefull. But before that can happen browsers need to implement them in such a way that they do not interfere with anything. There also needs to be a built in mechenism for exposing what the access keys are. Also much research needs to be done to determine whether it is better to let the user define their own, to have a standard set, or developer set (asuming there is a reliable way to expose them).
On a side note, until this is built in maybe a Firefox extention would help.
Jonathan Worent
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
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| Sandpetra wrote: |
| When using accesskeys, you have a choice: either (1) use only a predefined set, such as these 0-9 keys defined by the UK gov't, or (2) define access keys for your own site (perhaps sharing some of them with the "standard set"). |
I can't help thinking that one reason why access keys haven't been standardised is because usually the information on a site describing them is one click deep and never on the home page. Obviously designers do not want to sully there designs with placing accesskey info at the top of the body but if that became acceptable then maybe things would change?
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Perhaps even everybody just agreeing a skip links standard would be a useful start. 
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| Sandpetra wrote: |
| Perhaps even everybody just agreeing a skip links standard would be a useful start.
http://www.accessibility101.org.uk/ |
..... especially if not styling the skip link as:
| Code: |
| #skip
{ display: none; } |
so that most Assistive Technology UAs ignore it
Come to think of it, styling <H1> and text as :
| Code: |
| .engines
{ display: none; } |
has the same effect on those entities
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What's the best way to achieve a successful skip links function?
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The article here:
http://www.webaim.org/techniques/css/invisiblecontent/
contains the code that I would use.
This article also contains similar code:
http://www.webaim.org/techniques/skipnav/
This will make the text ('skip links' etc.) invisible to graphics browsers, but 'visible' to non-graphics UAs.
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