accesskey shortcuts.

When using accesskeys I have always stuck to the numbers zero through to
nine - the reason being that the other ascii keys are used with the Alt
key (or Apple key on Macs) in various instances.  Perhaps we should
include this in the guidelines?

Gian

-----Original Message-----
From: Mathew.Mirabella [mailto:Mathew.Mirabella@team.telstra.com]
Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 3:43 PM
To: w3c-wai-gl
Subject: form controls: acesskey shortcuts.


All.

A further query and item for discussion.

Excluding the provision of a separate page with a list of accesskeys,
how do
you highlight the fact that keyboard accesskey shortcuts are available
without making dramatic changes to a page.

An example:

      <label for="username">Username:</label> <input name="username"
id="username" type="text" value="" size="30" tabindex="1" accesskey="u">

I have seen one way to indicate to users that there is a keyboard
shortcut
combination.  Place some text on the page explaining the alt-combination
shortcuts, and also underline the respective character in the text of
the
label.  What are your thoughts on the following example of underlining
characters.

      ...<span style="text-decoration: underline;>U</span>sername...

This is, of course, visual, and not descriptive to a screen reader user.
So
there are problems with doing this without non-visual equivalents.  It
would
also be a problem with links, as link text is supposed to be underlined.
Maybe you could use a bolded character instead of an underlined
character?

What do you all think?

Cheers.

mat.


Mat Mirabella
Telstra Research
03 9253 6712