- From: Kynn Bartlett <kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com>
- Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 17:51:43 -0700
- To: Graham Oliver <graham_oliver@yahoo.com>
- Cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Accesskey is problematic. Basically you have to guess at whatever keys the user agent, operating system, assistive technologies, and other programs aren't already using, and use something else, and hope the user has a way to use them. This is a bad enough problem itself (quick fix: Only use 0-9 as accesskeys...), but there are further problems with accesskey. To create a good user interface, you need to tell the user what accesskeys are available. That's where the real problem comes in. You can't use one user interface to do this -- you need to have an adaptable UI to pull it off correctly in a decent manner, or else kludge in pointless verbiage. The problem is that you don't want to leave out reference to the accesskeys if the user can use it, but you don't want to put them in if the user can't use it. Your alternatives are sensing the browser somehow (server-side, javascript), or putting in long text of the kind "If you have Netscape, blah blah, if you have IE, blah blah, if you have Opera, blah blah." The latter is generally a Bad Idea. Accesskey: Good idea, poorly thought out implementation. --Kynn -- Kynn Bartlett <kynn@reef.com> Technical Developer Liaison Reef North America Accessibility - W3C - Integrator Network Tel +1 949-567-7006 ________________________________________ BUSINESS IS DYNAMIC. TAKE CONTROL. ________________________________________ http://www.reef.com
Received on Tuesday, 21 August 2001 20:55:37 UTC