Bill Haneman: [Moderator Action] Re: Should accesskey focus or activate?

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From: Bill Haneman <bill.haneman@ireland.sun.com>
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To: Scott Luebking <phoenixl@sonic.net>
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Subject: [Moderator Action] Re: Should accesskey focus or activate?
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Scott Luebking wrote:
> 
> Hi, Aaron
> 
> One approach would be to have two types of access keys.  If a control
> is assigned access key 'Z', the something like ctrl-shift-Z focuses
> and ctrl-alt-Z activates.  

Remember that for accessibility it's important to use as few
combo-keystrokes as possible.  Even with sticky keys, for a user with,
say, poor hand control, multi-keystroke sequences make the likelihood
of mistyping much higher (error rate multiplies by the number of
keystrokes).

Example:  person with Parkinson's mistypes a key 20% of the time.

single key: 80% success
double key: 64% success
triple key: 51% success...

of course hitting backspace to correct is subject to the same error
rate. Admittedly the meta keys are sometimes easier to hit than other
keys.  The point is that if it's feasible to use only one shift/meta
key, that's preferable to multiple meta keys.

> That way the user can make the determination
> at time of use.  This actual choice of ctrl, alt, etc should probably
> be configurable because of operating system and also access technology
> conflicts.


Yep, very important!

Regards,

Bill
> Scott
> 
> > 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:

- -- 
- --------------
Bill Haneman
Gnome Accessibility / Batik SVG Toolkit
Sun Microsystems Ireland

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Received on Saturday, 28 April 2001 00:47:43 UTC