ACCESS + KEY still = ACCESSKEY

With apologies for cross posting.

Dear Friends,

For the many that know me, you know that a post to any of these lists on
the topic of ACCESSKEY will automatically receive a response from me.  I
think by now my position is abundantly clear on this topic.

When I first heard that XHTML 2 was deprecating ACCESSKEY in favor of
the ACCESS element and the ROLE attribute, my initial reaction was,
"Finally, they will get this right and a  predictable, useful, stable
means will finally emerge to provide keyboard navigation to those that
can truly benefit from it".  For while I have continually decried the
mess and potential for harm that ACCESSKEY presented, I have always
supported and advocated for a better way, and we publicly applauded the
W3C for "getting it" too (Aug. 14, 2004 -
http://www.wats.ca/articles/thefutureofaccesskeys/66).

Along the way however, the ACCESS element has been shackled with the
"KEY" attribute, allowing the possibility for the content author to
dictate a specific key binding to one or more of the access points, in
effect, I believe, replicating and perpetuating many of the most serious
issues with ACCESSKEY: keystroke conflicts, little or no conflict
resolution, internationalization issues, lack of an existing or
persistent standard, etc.

And so I have asked the Editors of the XHTML 2 Draft Recommendation to
remove the KEY attribute from the specification.  The full text of my
request is published on the WATS.ca website:
http://www.wats.ca/articles/xhtmlroleaccessmodulestillflawed/80

I ask that you take the five minutes required to review my request, and
if you believe, as I do, that the KEY attribute has no place in XHTML 2,
then I urge you to say so to the Draft Editors at www-html@w3.org.
Remember, "The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international
consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, AND THE PUBLIC
work together to develop Web standards." (http://www.w3.org/Consortium/)

Thank you.

JF
--
John Foliot  foliot@wats.ca
Web Accessibility Specialist / Co-founder of WATS.ca
Web Accessibility Testing and Services
http://www.wats.ca   
Phone: 1-613-482-7053

Received on Thursday, 17 November 2005 19:12:54 UTC