Re: Accesskeys (was RE: Accessibility features)

On Thu, 02 Feb 2006 16:15:39 +1200, John Foliot - WATS.ca <foliot@wats.ca>  
wrote:

> Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>>
>> By the way, Opera is actively pushing W3C to fix Accesskey
>> specifications in a way that doesn't require changing the markup, and
>> will hopefully mean that all you have to do to update your pages
>> about accesskey in the future will be to note that "new browsers
>> fixed this, will show you the key you need and how to activate it"...
>
> Chaals,
>
> This is interesting news.  When you say "fix" Accesskey specifications,
> 1) which specifications

Any new or edited W3C specification that has accesskey (or should). There  
may be others around such as WHAT-WG that can be improved too (although  
they may have got this issue right).

Compound Document Formats are a family of specifications that obviously  
need something better than the current crop, in order to work.

> 2) how do you propose they are "fixed"?

By including the requirements we have talked about for the last five years.

And by implementing. I am hopeful that at least Mozilla will also get it  
right in a code revision.

> Are you talking at the UAAG level?

No, UAAG makes the requirements (although they are not terribly clear)  
already. It is the specs that need to have them added/edited where we are  
interested.

> Are you saying that it would also be backward compatable?

In the sense that it would work with existing markup in new browsers, yes.

> Is there a time-line? (I know that one's tough)

"When It's Ready" ;)

This should be feasible in months, with implementation in released  
versions of browsers being the major headache (since it requires UI  
integration to be done right, and therefore documentation of what the  
browser does and all that goes with it...)

> If you are not already aware of the new crop of scripts around that hand
> the "power" to users, you should look at them.

Yes. It is perhaps a shame that it has to come about this way, rather than  
having been driven by browsers themselves, but user-centred design and  
development sometimes happens like that :) Anyway, the work done by the  
handful of good folks there is going to be necessary as long as current  
browsers are still around (a long time, I guess)

Cheers

chaals

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile                     chaals@opera.com
   hablo español  -  je parle français  -  jeg lærer norsk
      Peek into the kitchen: http://snapshot.opera.com/

Received on Thursday, 2 February 2006 07:28:39 UTC