Best Access Keys
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Hi guys
Does anyone have, or know of a list of the best Access Keys for a site (ie not using any common system shortcut key conflicts).
TIA
Mark
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Here's a good resource for standards, its worth reading the comments below for good reasons as to why you should perhaps give accesskeys a by ball!
http://www.clagnut.com/...
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the clagnut.com article and comments make for very good reading. all in all it seems to be advocating the use of numeric access keys.
hmm. i wonder why the UK governmentt chose their current scheme?
anyhow, i'm going to use 1, 2 and 3 for my keys.
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In fact, does anyone have any data/experience in knowing how blind people use accesskeys? Are they widely used, or are they seen as "gimmicky"?
How many of the forum members are blind/visually impaired? I'm not.
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I was just about to post a petition against use of (Alt-) D for any accesskey. I know I could just use F6 instead, but ... 
On that basis, neither should these be used:
Home
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I don't use any others myself, but D is the killer. (match that with a certain intranet site I know which also has Java applet rollovers...
)_________________
Kajun
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On the http://wats.ca website (of which one of our members, feather, is part of the company) are a couple of articles on access keys, http://wats.ca/... and http://wats.ca/... Their research on conflicts between access keys within different applications has led them to forego their use._________________
Jules
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would an element of server side scripting help? maybe post a certain page only accessible (hmm, via an access key?) and then let users decide which "keysets" they are most comfortable with. could maybe offer three groups of access keys, pre-determined not to conflict with any standard application keys. these value could then be stored with session variables/cookies.
alternatively, what about letting users determine their own access keys, which could be done via ss scripting again? possibly a bit of a long winded approach though - would it get used?
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| Jules wrote: |
| On the http://wats.ca website (of which one of our members, feather, is part of the company) are a couple of articles on access keys, http://wats.ca/... and http://wats.ca/... Their research on conflicts between access keys within different applications has led them to forego their use. |
Just to add to that, we'll be adding at least one other resource on the topic of access keys this week that further elucidate the problems with their implementation. As Kajun points out, Alt + D is perhaps the most problematic, with Alt + S causing problems with WindowEyes.
I'll post when these items go live...
Feather.
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Anyone have a definitive list of "problem" keys with regard to (A) standard applications and OS's, and also (B) screenreaders? will that be part of the new resource?
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| mark wrote: |
| Anyone have a definitive list of "problem" keys with regard to (A) standard applications and OS's, and also (B) screenreaders? will that be part of the new resource? |
Well, I'm not sure this is definitive in terms of "problem" keys, but this resource is a fairly full compilation (and we invite anyone to submit anything else they have that we can add to the list...)
In the new piece, we'll outline some specific cases we've come across that are definitely "problems". I've just spoken with my associate John, and it looks like we'll have the next piece up later this afternoon.
Feather.
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feather - that's a good resource ... for English browsers. If you take into consideration that IE is available in many languages, you'll probably find that there are no letters available whatsoever.
For instance, in the Swedish version of IE, the 'Edit' menu is labeled 'Redigera', with access key Alt+R.
The Web is international, and unless you have a marketing web page targeting a domestic audience only, things like that may need to be considered.
I thought Opera's scheme for access keys (Shift+Escape) was weird; why not use Alt like every other Windows app? Now I realize that it may be a very clever approach. (Besides, Opera has about a gazillion other access keys of its own, using Alt+__ and Ctrl+__.)
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Tommy has left the building
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| TOOLman wrote: |
| feather - that's a good resource ... for English browsers. If you take into consideration that IE is available in many languages, you'll probably find that there are no letters available whatsoever. |
Ouch!
| Quote: |
| I thought Opera's scheme for access keys (Shift+Escape) was weird; why not use Alt like every other Windows app? Now I realize that it may be a very clever approach. (Besides, Opera has about a gazillion other access keys of its own, using Alt+__ and Ctrl+__.) |
It's a pity no international standard was worked out with one of the extra - and unused (? possibly now re-used by some OEMs) keys instead of "Alt". Mind you, that would be no good with the cut-down keyboard on a laptop.
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Michael
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| TOOLman wrote: |
| I thought Opera's scheme for access keys (Shift+Escape) was weird; why not use Alt like every other Windows app? Now I realize that it may be a very clever approach. |
Of course, you need at least 2 hands (or some wicked long fingers) to make Shift+Escape+0 (or something similar) work.
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| TOOLman wrote: |
| feather - that's a good resource ... for English browsers. If you take into consideration that IE is available in many languages, you'll probably find that there are no letters available whatsoever.
For instance, in the Swedish version of IE, the 'Edit' menu is labeled 'Redigera', with access key Alt+R. |
Indeed -- we suspected that to be the case when putting that chart together. We knowingly limited our scope to English version of products, but even then the results are unfortunate. I agree wholeheartedly that letters are really not the way to go.
I suspect IE in other languages reacts the same way to Accesskey conflicts as the English version does. There is a way around it by modifying your keystroke behaviour, but in reality, its not realistic as it would require too much of a change in the way people are used to using keystrokes (see relevant WebAIM discussion and and relevant WAI discussion for details)
In any case, we talk more about Internationalization issues in our latest, yet to be posted (because I haven't had time to review for acronyms, grammar, spelling etc) resource on the subject. Sigh... hopefully I'll get to it tonight...
Feather.
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| feather wrote: |
| In any case, we talk more about Internationalization issues in our latest, yet to be posted (because I haven't had time to review for acronyms, grammar, spelling etc) resource on the subject. Sigh... hopefully I'll get to it tonight... |
Just to bring this full circle and update the thread, as I said I would do, here are the items we published as follow up to the continuing debate on accesskeys. Including them here, simply for maintaining the relationships between other posts:
http://www.accessifyforum.com/...
feather.
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