Re: Should accesskey focus or activate?

Hi Aaron,

In my opinion they should focus. The problem if they activate without warning
is one of discovery, and also of reducing the value of accesskey (which
enables you to move from chunk to chunk in the "tab order" in a way that
tabindex does not do properly).

cheers

Charles

On Tue, 24 Apr 2001, Aaron Leventhal wrote:

  Hello all, a Netscape developer wanted to know whether accesskey should
  focus or activate controls, or whether it depends on the type of control.
  Here's his question in detail:

  > Hey Aaron,
  >
  > I wanted to get your opinion as accessibility guy on bug 55020, it's a
  > question of whether or not access keys should just focus the element in
  > question or focus and activate it.  You're cc'd on the bug, I'm not sure
  > if you've read it.  The bug has some valid points about accidental
  > activation of access key based items, especially since we allow the
  > accesskeys to beat out things like alt-F for menu opening.
  >
  > So currently we focus and activate everything.  I tend to agree with the
  > bug writer that we should move to only focusing things.  All of the
  > items can be keyboard triggered from there so a full keyboard solution
  > still works.
  >
  > And just for extra info's sake, IE's solution is, I think, a bit unusual.
  > They use a mix of focus and activation.  Buttons, for example, are
  > activated.  Links, however, are not.  Text fields just get focus but
  > what does activation of a text field mean anyway.  IE also overrides
  > stuff like alt-F when an accesskey of that letter is in use.
  >
  > So anyway, I'm just curious if you have an opinion from an accessibility
  > point of view.  My current stance is to go with the bug's solution and
  > start doing focus only unless more arguments arise in favor of
  > activation.
  >
  > 	-tom




-- 
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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(or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France)

Received on Tuesday, 24 April 2001 16:14:06 UTC