- From: John Foliot - WATS.ca <foliot@wats.ca>
- Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 11:28:11 -0500
- To: "'Rinit Satishkumar Shah'" <shahr3@cs.man.ac.uk>, <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Rinit Satishkumar Shah wrote: > Hello, > I am a student in the department of Computer Science, University of > Manchester studying for my B.Sc in Computer Science with Business and > Management. I am currently in the middle of my dissertation > (supervised by Dr. Simon Harper) for which I am developing an > extension to Mozilla Firefox to enable access keys to be displayed > for every web page. > The debate on the pros and cons of accesskeys is, by now, well documented. While there *are* arguments for using them, on balance I believe that they can in fact cause more harm than good, and say so every chance I get. Should you care, we have written extensively on the topic at WATS.ca. I urge you to at the very least give the arguments some serious consideration: Using Accesskeys - Is it worth it?: http://www.wats.ca/articles/accesskeys/19 More reasons why we don't use accesskeys: http://www.wats.ca/articles/accesskeyconflicts/37 Accesskeys and Reserved Keystroke Combinations: http://www.wats.ca/resources/accesskeysandkeystrokes/38 Link Relationships as an Alternative to Accesskeys: http://www.wats.ca/articles/accesskeyalternatives/52 The Future of Accesskeys: http://www.wats.ca/articles/thefutureofaccesskeys/66 It is also worth noting that Accesskeys are being deprecated in XHTML 2, in part, I believe, because of the very issues we discuss above. > > Questionnaire > Below is a brief description of what access keys are. > > > An access key allows a computer user to immediately jump to a > specific part of a web page via the key board. This is particularly > useful for an environment that does not use a mouse or other pointing > device. Currently, most websites do not take into account for these > keys and make it extremely difficult for users in a non pointing > device environment to use the web site. The extension to the web > browser that I am in the process of developing will allow access keys > to be generated automatically for every web page. And are you sure that there will be no keystroke conflicts in this "auto-generation" process? Currently there are very few keys that remain unclaimed by one process/application or another. > > > > > Before you read the above description, did you know what access keys > are (YES or NO)? > Yes > > Do you want access keys for all web pages (YES or NO)? > No > > Do you currently use access keys (YES or NO)? > No > > If available, would you use access keys (YES or NO)? > Not sure > > > How would you like access keys to be displayed? > > > Any other comments? > See above > > > Please specify your age range: a) 16-24 > b) 24-40 > c) 41 + > 40+ > > > Please specify your gender: Male or Female > Male > > Please specify whether you are a) Sighted > b) Visually impaired > c) Partially blind > Sighted
Received on Friday, 4 November 2005 16:28:24 UTC