[accesskey] update for WCAG on PF discussions

<quote cite=
"http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2004JulSep/0318.html">
This leads to the following questions that we would
like feedback from WCAG about:
What are the standard access keys we would like to see defined and what
are the use cases?
What are the standard roles we would like to see defined and what are the
use cases?
</quote>

** summary

I would like to suggest that we break the analysis into two steps:

First, what are the uses [for accesskey, of page sections] that
make sense to provide hotkeys or navigation stops for, and

Second, which of these make more sense as web-wide standard
notions [and markup names], and which are more appropriately
something invented, and explained somehow, but the authors.

** background

The role of the author in defining hotkeys and suggesting bindings
is a issue in PF at present; we aren't consensed one way or the other.

Maybe this should be a setting the user can do in the preferences
interface of the base browser, or maybe this is something that an
AT should be able to configure programmatically based on the user's
preferences expressed to the AT.

Apart from having an open question as to how to re-engineer
'accesskey' in XHTML 2.0, the HTML WG has created a facilility
for author-defined events.  One technique for accesskey replacement
would be to create an event representing the user's wish for a
particular conceptual function, and then use the event programming
facilities to attach adapted trigger events to cause this event to
be fired and handlers for this event that would adapt the system
response when these events happen.  That is just one possibility, but
it is there among the possibilities raised by the new material in XHTML 2.0

http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/mod-xml-events.html#s_xml-eventsmodule

In addition, the capabilities for authors to explain what they invent have
been improved through expanded meta-information capabilities.  So saying
that authors have to explain innovations is not so empty a threat as before.

http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/mod-metaAttributes.html#s_metaAttributesmodule

Thank you for considering these questions,

Al

Received on Thursday, 5 August 2004 13:21:16 UTC