Re: User Survey: accesskey

At 09:00 AM 2000-07-06 -0400, Leonard R. Kasday wrote:
>
>This isn't the suggested behavior of HTML 4.01 [1], which states that
>quote
>For example, when a user activates a link defined by the A element, the 
>user agent generally follows the link
>unquote
>
>In MSIE 5 isn't following the link.  It's just giving focus to the 
>link.  You have to then press return to follow the link (actually, I think 
>the MSIE behavior is better than what HTML 4.01 suggests).
>
>Note however, that HTML spec doesn't really specify what should happen: it 
>has that word "generally"... so it seems to be trying to describe the 
>status quo.  (And it turns out that, like I mentioned, it isn't describing 
>the status quo, at least as far as MSIE 5 is concerned).
>
>What HTML 4.01 does specify is that
>quote
>Pressing an access key assigned to an element gives focus to the element
>unquote
>
>That doesn't seem to mean anything for anchors (what does it mean to give 
>an anchor "focus"), so the fact that nothing happens for anchors seems to 
>be consistent with the spec.
>
>Bottom  Line:
>We need to add a specification to HTML to specify behavior for anchors: 
>viz. that it scroll to that point.
>
>references
>[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#adef-accesskey

Please check out the relevant parts of the User Agent Accessibility
Guidelines because I thought it is supposed to be in there.

Our publishing plan is to get this in a Recommendation in the UAAG and
follow up by using clearer language in something like XHTML 2.

A similar requirement applies when you do a string search in the document.  

Al

Received on Thursday, 6 July 2000 09:58:49 UTC