- From: Jason White <jasonw@ariel.its.unimelb.edu.au>
- Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2005 11:23:07 +1000
- To: "John Foliot - WATS.ca" <foliot@wats.ca>
- Cc: "'Shane McCarron'" <shane@aptest.com>, "'w3c-wai-ig'" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>, "'wai-xtech'" <wai-xtech@w3.org>, "'www-html'" <www-html@w3.org>
I agree with Charles McCathieNevile's comment on this subject to the effect that there is benefit to be gained in allowing the author to "propose" a default key binding for an actionable element. The problem of key conflicts has long been solved, for example in assistive technologies, by offering an "escape" or "pass-through" key combination that sends the following key combination to the running application, irrespective of any conflict that would otherwise occur. To avoid conflicts, all that is required is for user agents to provide an escape mechanism, or comparable functionality, to ensure that the next key combination typed is taken as an "access key" to be interpreted according to the mapping defined in the Web content (e.g., the current XHTML document). It would also be reasonable to request that authors choose access keys from characters used in the primary natural language of the content (a user agent capable of presenting content in a particular language should be able to accept input of the requisite characters, and if a more stringent requirement is deemed necessary in this regard it can be introduced into pertinent guidelines). Thus I am in favour of having an "access key"-type mechanism and I don't find the objections which have been raised against it persuasive.
Received on Thursday, 9 June 2005 01:24:21 UTC