RE: accesskey shortcuts.

I suspect that the majority of accesskey users aren't people who use alt text
to find out about images, but are visual users. I like the practice of
providing somewhere (e.g. via a link, or the way that it is done by
http://www.globalformats.com as an option) information  about all the
accesskeys - the major problem for blind users in particular is that by the
time they have scanned all the links  to find the acceskeys they don't need
to have known them unless they keep coming back, whereas fora visual user
this kind of presentation is often fine.

cheers

Charles

On Fri, 14 Dec 2001 gian@stanleymilford.com.au wrote:

  I have always shown that accesskeys are available by including them in
  the alt text of an image (that is a link) and including them in the
  title attribute of text links. For accesskeys in forms I have always
  specified what accesskeys are what in the introductory information at
  the beginning of the form.

  -----Original Message-----
  From: charles [mailto:charles@w3.org]
  Sent: Saturday, December 08, 2001 6:02 PM
  To: Gian Sampson-Wild
  Cc: w3c-wai-gl
  Subject: Re: accesskey shortcuts.


  This shouldn't go in the guidelines as a permamnent requirement. But
  until
  more browsers are smarter about adapting the accesskeys to their own
  capabilities it is a useful technique - they are certainly the most
  widely
  available keys.

  For browsers that do a reasonable job of accesskeys there are plenty
  more
  though - and it is possible to implement accesskeys in a way that makes
  tsomething available for the user to find out what they are, and be able
  to
  use any control that has an accesskey assigned without having to
  restrict
  them this far - there is a lot of value in having mnemonic accesskeys,
  and as
  someone who uses them a lot (in iCab, where it is just the key with no
  alt or
  ctrl or whatever) I appreciate the functionality.

  cheers

  Charles

  On Fri, 7 Dec 2001 gian@stanleymilford.com.au wrote:

    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






-- 
Charles McCathieNevile    http://www.w3.org/People/Charles  phone: +61 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative     http://www.w3.org/WAI    fax: +1 617 258 5999
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Received on Friday, 14 December 2001 21:51:51 UTC