Discuss: Accesskeys: Unlocking Hidden Navigation

by Stuart Robertson

11 Why accesskeys suck & Errors

Stuart Robertson wrote:
> [url=“http://www.designmeme.com/”] accesskey=“h”>[em]H[/em]ome[/url]

Its a pity the article doesn’t mention the rather nasty side effects that using access keys has, namly cripling predefined keyboard shortcuts.

A discussion of the issue was raised on the WAI interest group mailing list:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2003AprJun/0549.html
(ensure you read the entire thread though, there is a lot more to it then covered in the initial post)

Sonia wrote:
> I’ve implemented accesskeys on a few sites that we will
> soon be releasing, but failed to get them working in Opera.

The key combination to use access keys is not dependent on the operating system (as the article claims), its dependant on the browser. Opera uses Shift+Esc, not Alt.

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2003JanMar/0643.html

posted at 02:54 pm on June 16, 2003 by David Dorward

12 Opera 7 and numbers?

David,

Thank you for your response. Those buttons do in fact work in Opera, but it seems that Opera (7.11) doesn’t support numeric accesskeys.

I’ve tested the keys from the article, which are all letters, and they work fine. I then went to one of my sites, and then to diveintomark.org, and Opera couldn’t ‘fire’ the accesskeys on either of those sites. I have modeled the accesskey use on my sites after that found on diveintomark.org and www.webaim.org, among others.

posted at 03:11 pm on June 16, 2003 by Sonia

13 Error in Error

>Its a pity the article doesn’t mention the rather nasty side effects that using >access keys has, namly cripling predefined keyboard shortcuts.

Depends on the OS (as the article says). On the Mac, you can’t over-ride predefined shortcuts defined by the OS. Command+H means “hide this window” in Mac OS X. If you set “H” as your “Home” accesskey shortcut, Command+H won’t load “Home” because that combination is reserved by the OS. But Control+H will work in Mac browsers that support accesskey … for instance it will work in IE5/Mac.

Maybe Im missing the point but I thought the article got it right.

The additional info from lists.w3.org is very helpful, though. Thanks!

posted at 03:23 pm on June 16, 2003 by AdLad

14 Using Accesskeys - Is it worth it?

(Originally presented on the wats.ca web site at: http://wats.ca/resources/accesskeys/19)

In a non-scientific study conducted in the summer of 2002, we researched the availability of available Accesskeys which had not already been reserved by various other adaptive technologies, such as JAWS (currnetly the most popular Screen Reading application) and IBM’s HomePageReader, a popular screen reading web browser, which has built in keystroke shortcuts for going into different modes:

Alt + L starts Links reading mode (only read the links on the page) Alt + C starts Character reading mode (read character by character) Alt + 1 starts Heading reading mode (reading only the headings on a page) Alt + O (letter O not number zero) starts Controls reading mode

HomePageReader makes no distinction between these keystrokes and will not allow you to use accesskeys. Besides, their mechanism actually seems to make more sense — using links mode to cycle through a list of links seems much more useful and usable. (Interestingly, for accesskeys to work in HomePageReader, the user must first “click” the mouse within the display screen of the application… a curious requirement in a tool geared to the visually impaired…)

Disappointingly, our research discovered that all but 3 keys were previously “claimed” by one technology or the other (including but not limited to the two applications mentioned):

AccessKey / (slash)
AccessKey (backslash)
AccessKey ] (right square bracket)

At that point it was then pointed out (by Jukka “Yucca” Korpela – a well respected accessibility expert) that even these keys would be inaccessible to users not using a North American Standard (QWERTY) keyboard. So while it seems that Accesskeys is a great idea in principle, implementation brings with it the possibility that it either will not be available to all users, or that the keystroke combination encoded within the web page may conflict with a reserved keystroke combination in an adaptive technology or future user agent.

This potential problem was subsequently brought to the attention of the Canadian Common Look and Feel Access Working Group (who had previously suggested the standardized use of Accesskeys M, 1 and 2 on Government of Canada web sites), and after consideration the Access Working Group reversed it’s recommendation and now suggest not to use Accesskeys on thier Web sites. (www.cio-dpi.gc.ca/clf-upe/6/skip_e.asp)

posted at 03:24 pm on June 16, 2003 by John Foliot

15 Access Keys & JAWS

A few points about AccessKeys that I haven’t seen addressed often (or well enough)

First of all, unless I’m daft (which is always possible), there’s no set standard for a site’s access keys. One site might define a ‘home’ link as ‘H’, another may use ‘1’. While each site will have different requirements, it might be valuable for some analysis into standardizing these.

Your browser’s menu bar also uses ALT + [key] combinations, and a page’s AccessKeys override these. If you’ve managed to hook every menu item’s key into your page as an AccessKey, I can’t really think of a reliable way to get back up to that menu using the keyboard alone. (ie. ALT + F to get to the File menu won’t work if you’re using ‘F’ as an AccessKey)

JAWS (a popular screenreader) uses its own set of keyboard shortcuts, too, just in case this wasn’t complicated enough. I’ve heard it said the numeric keypad is a popular area, so it’s possible that numbered (AccessKeys 1, 2, 3) navigation will be harder to use than lettered (AccessKeys a, b, c etc.). This is hearsay, but from a source that has a better handle on this than I, so I’m willing to believe it.

posted at 03:25 pm on June 16, 2003 by Dave S.

16 Smartphones

MS Pocket Internet Explorer uses accesskeys and I highly recommend them for Smartphone sites – assign the numbers 0 to 9 to different menu options, as done on http://smartphone.orange.co.uk/ or the site I developed, www.planus.net/spv (provides low-cost SMS messages).

posted at 03:27 pm on June 16, 2003 by Ben Smith

17 Clarification

AdLad: I didn’t say it always conflicts. :)

I missed the part of the article which mentions the problems for Windows users, but its incomplete.

On Mozilla for Linux for example, the only way to get at a menu that has a conflicting access key with the keyboard, is to open a different menu, then arrow key to it.

Even on Windows/IE, while you can get at the menu by pressing alt, releasing it, then pressing the key, there are still two problems.
(1) The user has to retrain to learn the other method
(2) Key combos that are consistant everywhere else (other pages, other apps) don’t work! Major violation of the key principle of good interface design – consistancy.

posted at 03:46 pm on June 16, 2003 by David Dorward

18 Hmm....

Would there be some way to have accesskey underlining only show up when the user hits or holds down the ALT key, like how windows apps do it? That would be pretty cool, since we wouldn’t have all this ugly underlining all the time, and people wouldn’t have to roll over or focus on the link to find the accesskey (which seems silly – if they’ve already focused on the link or used the mouse to hover it, they can just hit enter or click the mouse – they don’t need an accesskey.)

It also seems, as some people have already said, that a standard for which accesskeys do what should be established. At least in windows, I know that hitting Alt+F will get me File, and Alt+H will get me help, and F1 will get me the actual help system, so on, no matter what app I’m in. Custom accesskeys for each web page seems pretty useless. The whole point of keyboard shortcuts is that once you get familiar with an app you use the shortcuts – there are not too many people who will be spending so much time on your site that they memorize your accesskeys. It’s like using <link> tags to give navigation hints – it’s a great idea but I haven’t seen any standardization of the keywords so far.

posted at 03:50 pm on June 16, 2003 by Ben

19 Access Keys on Wap

Does anyone know if you Wap or WML support access keys? Would be really useful to assign a number to a link. Would save an awful lot of scrolling in a small screen estate environment.

posted at 03:54 pm on June 16, 2003 by Adrian Sevitz