RE: ACCESSKEY attribute

		(dropping Interest group off the thread)

		I don't know, but I will find out.  Thanks for pointing it
out.

		The HTML specification is fairly clear as to the usage and
presentation of ACCESSKEY.  Use the platform conventions.  For Windows that
would be an ALT key prefix and an underline character.  Other platforms have
other conventions.  I regret to say that we don’t present the underline
character in the current version of Internet Explorer.

		Programmatically, the ACCESSKEY attribute is available
through Active Accessibility and the Dynamic HTML object models with
Internet Explorer.  I’m sure the final Document Object Model (DOM) that the
W3C DOM group is working on will also contains a property for this.

		Charles Oppermann
		Program Manager, Active Accessibility, Microsoft Corporation
		mailto:chuckop@microsoft.com http://microsoft.com/enable/
		“A computer on every desk and in every home, usable by
everyone!”

		-----Original Message-----
		From: Liam Quinn [mailto:liam@htmlhelp.com]
		Sent: Monday, February 16, 1998 4:50 PM
		To: David Bolnick; w3c-wai-gl@w3.org; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
		Subject: RE: ACCESSKEY attribute


		At 11:43 AM 16/02/98 -0800, David Bolnick wrote:
		>In IE the ACCESSKEY is assigned to the Alt so that is
follows the
		>Alt+menu-mnemonic convension (as in selecting a menu from
the menu bar).

		Is there any reason why ACCESSKEY does not work for me using
IE 4.01 for
		Win95 at <http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/csscheck/>?

		>Given that: If, for example, a 'Save' Button uses
ACCESSKEY="s", then the
		>button text should be _S_ave (i.e., Save with the initial S
underlined:
		><u>S</u>ave).

		The browser should underline the character, not the author.
If the author
		underlined it, users of non-supporting browsers and browsers
with a
		different method of selecting an ACCESSKEY would be somewhat
confused.
		Also keep in mind that the U element is deprecated in HTML
4.0.

		A more explicit implementation, and one that would allow for
an access key
		not actually present in the label, would be for the browser
to output
		[ALT-S] (for ACCESSKEY=S) before or after the form control.
The
		my-layout-or-no-layout crowd would probably throw a fit, but
it might be
		useful at least as a user option.  In general, though, I'd
rather as a user
		have the convention of my operating system used--for
Windows, this would be
		underlining, but other operating systems may have different
customs.

		--
		Liam Quinn
		Web Design Group            Enhanced Designs, Web Site
Development
		http://www.htmlhelp.com/    http://enhanced-designs.com/

Received on Monday, 16 February 1998 22:19:29 UTC