RE: Accesskey: there are "techniques"?

I don't think it is CIOB's prerogative to ride rough shod over these
things. While suggesting that the use of '1', '2', and 'm' as accesskeys
is inadvisable it is still a UA issue how they cope with accesskeys.
Accesskeys have been around long enough so that UA have had time to
integrate them into their navigational systems. 

I think the use of accesskeys is important because they allow semantic
mapping which are too complex for even the cleverest technology to work
out on its own. While assistive technology browsers may allow skipping
between paragraphs headers and many other combinations of things
accesskeys gives the page author the power to link directly to (groups
of) semantically defined items. 

So for example a user can skip from anywhere in the page straight to the
search form, the navigation or specific parts of the navigation
depending on how the accesskeys have been laid out. Yet the browser
manufacturers in their wisdom have decided that their keys are more
important, or worse that they will use the same keys till they are
overruled. While I accept that much of the power behind much assistive
browser technology relies on combination of key strokes, I think it is
important to give accesskeys a reserved slot. If alt+h might be an
accesskeys or it might be a whole new help window, it will quickly
become frustrating if (being human) you can not remember if a page has
an 'h' accesskeys or not.

I do however think that Jukka Korpela's point (as Gian pointed out) that
'1', '2', '3'... rely on QWERTY (or Dvorak) keyboards is something we
should note. This is much less of a UA issue and more of a cultural one.
There was some discussion this week of allowing for other cultures and
looking for ways to support them. One of the concerns raised was Japan
not wanting to use WCAG 1.0 because they felt it was not appropriate to
particular issues. This could well be one of those issues if we
recommend something that is culturally inappropriate. However as I said
before accesskeys should be translated into other languages as content
and menus should be, if they are translated as concepts rather than keys
these cultural differences can be addressed. You can refer to my sizable
mail on Friday 26th for information on how we did this on the Plone
project.

Splurging,

Tom

Co-founder Netalley Networks
(http://www.netalleynetworks.com),
BSc(Hons) Computing Student / Information Services Staff University of
Sunderland
(http://www.sunderland.ac.uk),
Accessibility Co-ordinator Plone CMS
(http://www.plone.org)


-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Roberto Scano - IWA/HWG
Sent: 28 September 2003 10:26
To: Gian Sampson-Wild (PurpleTop); 'Charles Oppermann';
w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: Re: Accesskey: there are "techniques"?



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gian Sampson-Wild (PurpleTop)" <gian@purpletop.com.au>
To: "'Charles Oppermann'" <charles@coppersoftware.com>;
<w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 28, 2003 11:18 AM
Subject: RE: Accesskey: there are "techniques"?


>
> The other problem with numbers is that at least one is used by a
screen
> reader: IBM Homepage Reader uses the numeral 1 to begin  reading in
> heading mode.  See: http://wats.ca/resources/accesskeys/19, which
> specifies that the only 'free' ascii keys are:
> AccessKey / (slash)
> AccessKey (backslash)
> AccessKey ] (right square bracket)
> Note: "At that point it was then pointed out (by Jukka "Yucca"
Korpela -
> a well respected accessibility expert) that even these keys would be
> inaccessible to users not using a North American Standard (QWERTY)
> keyboard"

Hum... also interesting the reference for the canadian government web
sites:

http://www.cio-dpi.gc.ca/clf-upe/6/skip_e.asp

At least... accesskey should be used or not? :-/

Received on Sunday, 28 September 2003 06:38:14 UTC