Limited Number of possible accesskey values

I've searched the net far and wide, and the W3 site as well, and can't seem
to find a complete reference for the available accesskey attribute values.

Now that web developers have AOL, IE4, IE5, IE5.5, NS4x, NS6x, NS7x, Opera,
Safari, and even more browsers, it seems there needs to be a list of the
available accesskey values that remain, after subtracting all of the
built-in keyboard commands already taken by the various browsers.

The problem is best stated in this way:

The total maximum number of possible accesskey attribute values (47?) is, in
practice, a smaller subset of
{abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789-=`[]\;',./} based on the following:

- Internet Explorer has reserved:
	- Alt-f : File Menu
	- Alt-e : Edit Menu
	- Alt-v : View Menu
	- Alt-a : Favorites Menu
	- Alt-t : Tools Menu
	- Alt-h : Help Menu
	- Alt-d : Address Field

- Netscape Communicator 7 has reserved:
	- Alt-f : File Menu
	- Alt-e : Edit Menu
	- Alt-v : View Menu
	- Alt-g : Go 
	- Alt-b : Bookmarks
	- Alt-t : Tools
	- Alt-h : Help
	- Alt-w : Window

- Opera 7 has reserved:
	- Alt-f : File Menu
	- Alt-e : Edit Menu
	- Alt-v : View menu
	- Alt-n : Navigate menu
	- Alt-b : Bookmark
	- Alt-m : mail
	- Alt-w : Window
	- Alt-H : Help

Thus, the remaining keys left for use as a value to the accesskey attribute
for links on accessible web pages are:

{cijklopqrsuxyz0123456789`-=[]\;',./}

35 available access key attribute values.

This does not include AOL browser (IE variant?) or Safari on Macintosh OSX,
which may reduce this set even further.

This also brings up the question, how do you encode a page properly to
support WAI standard(s), which has more than 35 links on a page? In
otherwords, are accessible pages limited to 35 links per page?


Geoff Hoffman
Lead Web Developer
AZ Interactive Media Group
ghoffman@aztrib.com

Received on Monday, 14 April 2003 20:00:26 UTC