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Programming Technology

Benefits of Using Access Keys in HTML? 42

Posted by Cliff from the accessibility-is-a-good-thing dept.
kandresen asks: "I have been considering the use of access keys in my web site as an accessibility feature, and was originally looking at possible side effects this could have for people with PCs and Macs, however in my search I found the problem was far wider than just that, as people with different language version of these OS'es may have different key bindings. Many of the websites I deal with have an International reach, so I can see this may limit the available keys quite a bit. The better approach, which would avoid the entire problem, unfortunately does not seem to be a reality, even in the upcoming version of XHTML 2. So, I wonder whether other webmasters have had many complaints from their users regarding the use of access keys interfering with system specific shortcuts, such as bookmarking, help functions, accessing of favorites, and so forth. Do you have any tips as for how to avoid negative side effects? Are there some keys that do not cause much problems regardless of language, OS, or the client being used? Is there a way to use Javascript to take care of such problems?"
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Benefits of Using Access Keys in HTML? More

Benefits of Using Access Keys in HTML?

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  • Meh. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by irc.goatse.cx troll ( 593289 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @01:03AM (#14208064) Journal
    Sounds like a good idea, and as a keyboard cowboy I appreciate it, but the first time I tried to leave a webpage by hitting alt+d to go to the address bar to type a url and got a donation page I was instantly turned off by the idea. While you can do it right, its rarely worth the effort unless you're doing a full out web app, and even then keep it optional.
    • How about:
      Start with a HINT popup (as mouse cursor goes over hotspot) showing a little menu.
      On the menu would be keyboard shortcuts.
      If you are starting from the viewpoint that no keyboard shortcut can be a standard, then just make up some nonstandard ones consistent across YOUR web pages.
      For example, ALT-1, ALT-2, ALT-3, ..., or CTRL-1, CTRL-2, CTRL-3... (the popup menu would explain which does what)

  • Not just OS specific (Score:4, Informative)

    by paulbiz ( 585489 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @01:04AM (#14208067) Journal
    It changes from one browser to the next. I believe in Opera you need to press Shift-ESC then the access key. Others may use ALT or some kind of platform-specific modifier key.

    A program theoretically shouldn't interfere with the system commands, but...

    In a world where we assume ALT is the access key modifier, and Alt-F is one of the shortcuts, does that deny them the ability to press Alt-F to access the File menu? I don't think there is any consistent behavior at all.

    Check out this page [www.wats.ca]. It has a table of known conflicts or potential problems.

    I tried using on a company intranet site, simply for my own amusement, and gave up. While I thought it was nice to press Alt-N to view the news page, nobody else knew how to use it or cared to learn. Most of them never take their hand off the mouse anyway (if they are physically able to choose).

    • Re:Not just OS specific (Score:5, Interesting)

      by IntlHarvester ( 11985 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @01:11AM (#14208099) Journal
      > nobody else knew how to use it or cared to learn.

      Aside from accessiblity (maybe a screen reader picks it up and communicates it?) -- I've seen AccessKeys used successfully in several webapps that replaced old style terminal applications, where there's a trained userbase doing data entry type stuff.

    • Display accesskeys using CSS (Score:5, Informative)

      by Chris Pimlott ( 16212 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @02:46AM (#14208452)
      I tried using on a company intranet site, simply for my own amusement, and gave up. While I thought it was nice to press Alt-N to view the news page, nobody else knew how to use it or cared to learn.

      Did they even know they were there? I find that many sites use AccessKeys but give no indication that they do or what they are. Luckily you can use a handy bit of CSS to help out.

      Using the selector before pseudo selector, you have have the accesskey shown automatically displayed before the element. For example, I have this in my Mozilla userContent.css:

      a[accesskey]:before {
          content: " " attr(accesskey) " ";

          text-transform: uppercase;
          white-space: pre;
          border: thin solid;
          font-family: sans-serif;
          text-decoration: underline overline;
          margin-right: 0.5ex;
      }

      The first two lines are the important part, the rest is just styling to make it look nice. Specifically, it adds a small box with the capitalized access key character before any link that uses one.

      For example, when I visit Freshmeat [freshmeat.net], the menu at the top looks something like this:

      [H] home | [B] browse | [A] articles | contact | chat | submit

      It's a neat trick and can be very handy. While it's true most sites don't use accesskeys, there's more out there than you might expect, and the ones that do almost never advertise it.
    • ALT-F.

      This has got to be my single biggest gripe with Wikipedia.

      Wikipedia binds ALT-F to bring focus to the search box. This blocks me from going to the File menu of my browser (Firefox) where to close the current tab (Alt-F-c). Yes I know about Ctrl-W, but I prefer Alt-F-c as I have to move my hand less.
  • Access keys can conflict with short cuts already defined by the browser. See this entry at accessify.com [accessify.com] about the problem. Also read this article [www.wats.ca].
  • So when will google.com let us open the result we want through keyboard? Or maybe it already does and I'm behind my times.

    // ville

  • No problem when properly implemented (Score:5, Informative)

    by Baloo Ursidae ( 29355 ) <dead@address.com> on Thursday December 08, 2005 @02:53AM (#14208472) Journal
    No point in making a web browser use the same keys for navigation as for itself. Too bad only the KDE developers have really thought this through so far.

    Because of this, the only browser to properly implement it so far is Konqueror. Press control, and access key labels appear over the appropriate links. Press that key.

  • you could always make a form based navigation system that is a command line. ^^

    i do know that with javascript you can specify actions for various keys like arrows and such. you could make a "virtual mouse pointer" that you can control with arrow keys if it is absolutely imperitive to be able to navigate without a mouse. i suggest if you are going to make a menu that is keyboard activated, you use the underline scheme like File. ive never considered of keyboard only interface as a must.

  • The way I see it, those that want to browse with keyboard shortcuts already have them. As an avid user of the Mozilla typeaheadfind I have usable shortcut keys that are standardized from page to page. All I do is type the text of what I want. Why would I want to learn a new way that will only only work on your page?

    So essentially, the users that want this added efficiency already have it, in lynx/firefox/browser of choice, and those that don't probably wouldn't bother to learn the page specific keys anywa

  • Use Numbers (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Gryftir ( 161058 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @05:28AM (#14208951)
    Maybe it's just me, but I've always felt that numbers were the natural access key for web applications.

    International reach? You know any keyboards that DON'T use arabic numerals in the same place on the keyboard?

    As for program conflicts, You need to make the site distinguish between firefox on linux and on other systems, since I believe the default on linux to switch between tabs is alt-(number key). You also need to
    give users the option to turn it off if they are using windows readers such as JAWS. But other then that, there are no conflicts.

    • Re:Use Numbers (Score:3, Informative)

      by headshrinker ( 37311 )

      Yes, quite a few arabic keyboards in fact. They use different characters to represent their numbers.

      (let's see if /. does UTF-8 now...)

      are the numerals used in many parts of the middle-east. In case those don't render (they didn't in preview mode here), try wikipedia's article on Arabic numerals [wikipedia.org].

      I've no idea how those are represented internally though, so it's possible that you could still use Arabic numeral access keys with those numbers and have it all work.

    • The standard access keys, according to Dive Into Accessibility [diveintoac...bility.org] are:
      Access key 1
      Home page
      Access key 2
      Skip to main content (the navigation bar skip link)
      Access key 9
      Feedback
      Access key 0
      Accessibility statement

      so I think you are on to something there. Stick to numbers and you stand a good chance of not conflicting with any browser short cuts.

  • Bad accessibility (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Illume ( 11015 )
    Keep in mind that nobody wants to learn new shortcuts for every website. Some users might not be able to navigate a page if their navigation keys are reprogrammed. If you want to make your pages more accessible then make sure that your pages use "strict" xhtml and css. Then visitors who need additional accessibility don't run into problems with their browser-modifications.

    Obscure keyboard shortcuts are convenient for blog/cms-administrators. And administrators can tweak the shortcuts if they don't like them
  • http://plone.org/accessibility-info [plone.org]

    The plone folks have spent some real time & energy on accessibility as well as standard based design. The nice part is this leads the way for anyone building their own site with plone to get to these standards quickly - esp. in their latest release.

    If you are trying to tackle accessibility, I recommend using plone, or at least looking at their code (you wouldn't be the first to use plone 'code' outside plone - I remember wikipedia css crediting plone... http://en. [wikipedia.org]

  • Just put a tag at the bottom of your site that says Best Viewed in English Language. ;-)
  • I think most people who like to avoid using the mouse and stick to the keyboard will already have something set up. I use conkeror [mozdev.org] for example. If I was more extreme I'd be using something like ratpoison [sourceforge.net] too. You don't need to provide this for people, they can arrange it themselves.
  • Yes, I know CTRL-L is the correct way to get to the address bar, but pressing ALT-D is a tough habit to break
  • How about using the Scroll Lock to toggle between web app and OS app?
  • MacOS X has a very thoughtful feature for people like me who have been using emacs virtually since birth.

    In Cocoa text boxes, the standard emacs keystrokes - Control-N for next line, Control-P for previous, etc - work just as they do in emacs. So I can edit my text more or less as I do in emacs, which is a great blessing for me because the keystrokes are truly embedded in my fingertips.

    Well, Wikipedia uses AccessKeys, and this absolutely ruins my browsing experience. I was typing merrily away writing an e
  • WTF are "Access Keys"? I thought Doom-style keycards for a second.

    kthx
  • No. Possibly. Maybe.

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