RE: More data on accesskeys (New article written Nov. 1)

Alastair Campbell wrote:
> Josh wrote:
>> At the risk of upsetting a hornets nest here, can you please point to
>> any resources which indicate exactly what UA key combinations are
>> mostly effected by user defined access keys?
> 
> There's a list of browser, OS & access technology keys here:
> http://www.wats.ca/show.php?contentid=43 

Thanks Alastair (time differences being what they are).  

Josh, I would only add that my little list is hardly "definitive", although
the research is/was solid at it's initial printing (2003).  I try to keep it
up-to-date, but (for example) the keystrokes for JAWS are based on JAWS 5
(and we've come some way since then).

None-the-less, it is (if nothing else) a cautionary list which hopefully
illustrates the foibles of author declared accelerator keys - one thing I
have not tracked for that list is the numerous Firefox extensions that have
started to implement an (ALT+__) style "hotkey" for their particular
function - which introduces a whole new layer of confusion.




Andy Mabbett wrote:
>> True, and several links were provided earlier in the thread to
>> implementations,
> 
> Sorry; I seem to have missed those.
> 

 - http://juicystudio.com/article/user-defined-accesskeys.php
 - http://juicystudio.com/article/user-defined-access-keys-aspversion.php

There are others...

> 
> Again,  my proposal is precisely the opposite. The user would
> configure their UA, once, regardless of which sites they subsequently
> visit. 

This is pretty much how and what the ACCESS element and @role attribute are
envisioned to do.  

Jon Gunderson, (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) has set up some
test cases that require the iCATA Accessibility Toolbar extension for
Mozilla/Firefox to demonstrate (proof of concept)
 - http://www.cita.uiuc.edu/software/mozilla/
 - http://firefox.cita.uiuc.edu/test/ts-test-page-role.php


> 
> That is what I'm proposing!
> 

Not to flog a dead horse, but may I also point you to:
Access + Key Still Equals Accesskey -
http://www.wats.ca/show.php?contentid=47

...where I detail my concerns on *how* the W3C are proposing this (the
inclusion of the @key attribute)

The proposed solution (which still has not made it to the draft spec) for
conflict resolution would go something along the lines of:

	User-defined key mappings take precedence over all
	User Agent mappings (including AT tools) follow
	Author suggested mappings if none specified (although this still
does not address discoverability)

JF
--
John Foliot  foliot@wats.ca
Web Accessibility Specialist
WATS.ca - Web Accessibility Testing and Services
http://www.wats.ca

Received on Friday, 3 November 2006 14:11:05 UTC