Accesskeys
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I do not use Accesskeys. I did find out that if you use Accesskeys, these do become the function of these keys and may present a problem with a user that sets up System Accesskeys.
For example, If a user decides that he or she would like J to jump to another window open on the desktop, and a web designer decided to use J as an accesskey to take the user to a *join* section on the website... The user would not be able to toggle to another open window on the desktop. The browser accesskey will replace the user system key.
Since there are only a few set of possibilities in the letter range, and quite possibly a user has memorized 26 key functions to work on their computer, then it would be very disorienting to replace those with a web page functionality.
Think also about a superuser who may have the same thing in mind that we do when we believe we are being safer and decide to use numbers. That super user may have already assigned functionality to numbers we choose.
Since we cannot know what a user system set up is, it may be best to not use Accesskeys on web pages? And if we do, we need to provide a visible key to those assignments. [visual and non visual users use accesskeys.]
something to think about.
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After reading this
| holly wrote: |
| The browser accesskey will replace the user system key. |
I'm off to remove accesskey from my site. I can't believe that in this day and age we still have to deal with software that would allow this type of thing to happen, but given that accesskey is not widely used or supported at the moment, few people will be affected by its absence ... those that do notice it, however, are likely to be greatly inconvenienced.
One thing that makes me wonder, though ... and I'm not trying to cast stones ... but why haven't we seen anything about this on Accessify or Dive Into Accessibility?
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I thought the issue of access keys was quite widely known. It's definitely been touched upon in this thread, but more explicitly with the last three posts. Dive Into Accessibility use numbers because of the problem, and provides two further links for an explanation:
Improving accessibility with accesskeys and
Access Keys, IE6
Ian also uses numbers for access keys on Accessify.
I think this is another implementation issue. It's obviously a good idea to use access keys, but the way they're currently implemented causes problems.
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drudging up an old topic:
So are there any new developments in using accesskeys?
My site right now uses them for every link, I was thinking of coming here to ask about methods to use to make it known that my links/forms uses access keys. After reading this thread I'm thinking about removing them altogether....
Anyone have any further thoughts or advice on this?
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I think eg link rel="home", defined in the meta tags is an alternative
I've been looking for a tutorial on this - so if anyone's got one....?
There's an article at the following URL:
http://www.virtuelvis.com/...
which tells you which keys are available in MSIE, Mozilla and Opera (apart from the 0-9) but it's not very encouraging - foreign language keyboards for example might use all the letters that are available on English keyboards.
So it looks like link rel="" (but I don't know how they are accessed by users).
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Chris
www.illumina.co.uk
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Isn't it the <link rel="..."/> element you're thinking about, rather than <meta/>?
Those are used by modern browsers, such as Mozilla and Opera, and also I think by Lynx. I don't know if they're any help for users with screen readers, but they are a nice feature even for people without disabilities.
Needless to say, IE has no support whatsoever for them.
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| webguy wrote: |
| After reading this thread I'm thinking about removing them (accesskeys) altogether....
Anyone have any further thoughts or advice on this? |
Well, I've got a thing or two to say about them, but I'll just point you to our articles/resources on accesskeys:
Using Accesskeys - Is it worth it? (May 08, 2003)
Accesskeys and Reserved Keystroke Combinations
More reasons why we don't use accesskeys (December 06, 2003)
Link Relationships as an Alternative to Accesskeys (December 07, 2003)
There is also some good discussion about it over on Dave Shea's Mezzoblue, where he caused quite a stir by announcing I Do Not Use Accesskeys. The comments are interesting -- including one humourous quote that says: "The first thing to notice is that wats.ca don’t really know what they’re talking about."
Clearly
There are also some relevant threads on other lists recently that indicate that others such as Paul Bohman at WebAIM have removed Accesskeys from their site as well for many of the reasons that we've advocated not using them. But again, we really don't know what we are talking about...
Well and truly there are others that disagree with us and still continue to advocate the use of accesskeys. Ultimately each person needs to choose for themselves -- just make sure that whatever you do you are well informed of both the benefits and the drawbacks.
feather.
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Last edited by Robert Wellock on 09 Mar 2004 05:14 pm; edited 2 times in total
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The truth is it is a WAI Suggested Requirement: http://www.w3.org/..._________________
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| Robert Wellock wrote: |
| The truth is it is a WAI Suggested Requirement: http://www.w3.org/... |
We are fully aware of the recommendations -- however, that doesn't change the fact that there are problems with the implementation of accesskeys in various browsers. We've looked at those problems in depth, and we've chosen not to implement them and outline our reasons in the items that we've written. As I said, some people disagree with us, and we disagree with other people. That's just the nature of our work -- either way, we are all entitled to our opinions <grin>
The bottom line for us has always been that despite the fact that the W3C set the standards and make recommendations, the web must continue to evolve and that won't happen without new ideas and critical review of current recommendations and practices.
feather.
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I don't disagree with what you're doing at all but it's the main reason I have bothered to use them. I would agree they are in most cases more hassle than they're worth since there is little practical consistency, let alone the language barriers, etc._________________
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WVYFC chose the Yorkshire Air Ambulance as the main charity to fund raise for in 2006
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| Robert Wellock wrote: |
| I don't disagree with what you're doing at all but it's the main reason I have bothered to use them. I would agree they are in most cases more hassle than they're worth since there is little practical consistency, let alone the language barriers, etc. |
I guess that it boils down to the fact that you have to know the rules so that you know which ones you can break...
not saying you don't know the rules, just saying that we've chosen to "break" them...
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Thank you, those links proved informative. Guess I will be removing my accesskeys after all. The w3c needs to make some changes, lately it seems they don't know what they are doing anymore... 
I've run into more than one recommendation that just doesn't make sense..oh well. 
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OK, I know I've joined this discussion rather late in the day - but hadn't read the 2003 post before anyway - but here is my 2p worth...
Firstly, "don't chuck the baby out with the bath water" to coin a phrase that springs to mind. Just because there may be problems on some systems and set up is not a reason to stop supporting the concept all together.
This leads onto my second point: accessibility is not just for the visually impaired. There is an unfortunate misconception that 'alt' text is enough for accessibility and not consider those who have other disabilities. This is, of course, partly down to the fact that RNIB have done so much campaigning in this area - and fair play to them my comment is not meant as a criticism of the great work they do. However, this does mean that there was an incorrect emphasis in earlier posts in this thread about screen-readers and their compatibility etc. which is not really as relevant.
So, thirdly, I think those who use accesskeys are more likely to have their setup customised to be able to be able to use them effectively. So it may not be worth panicking about.
At this point I thought I'd also raise a sort of alternative to consider (probably more as a complement to accesskeys rather than a replacement). Tab-indexing. I won't go into technical details in this post - can follow-up if requested, but I'm sure google would reveal far more useful information than I could give in a post - but basically this can provide an order that the user can tab through elements on the page. It's normally associated with forms and their elements, but can work equally well with links. Of course, this is not a total solution and has its own problems and difficulties in implementation - but it's certainly worth considering in the mix.
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As I see it, the only times access keys can be of use (even if the conflict with other parts of the system) if the user has a reasonable expectation of what they will do. This could be achieved by - Displaying them prominently on the site - this is unlikely in most cases, as it conflicts with other demands for screen space.
- Customization and training - really only appropriate for intranets.
- "Well known" site conventions - can work for sites such as MSN, Yahoo!, Google, etc., but not for most business sites - users will leave before they learn your key mappings.
- Some sort of standard: e.g. N always means Navigation (though that may itself have different meanings), C is for (shopping) Cart, etc.
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David
www.thebeadman.net (Caution: Mature content)
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