Access keys (although they are great) have a bad name because they are so poorly supported by certain browsers (not IE this time). Also, there is no international access key standard - at least not that I am aware of. This means that users who come to your site have to discover what your access keys are. Even if you have a clearly labelled help section with instructions, the access keys may be totally different from one site to another. The UK is one of the only places that seem to be trying to implement a standard access key system. Here is an example: http://www.defra.gov.uk/accesskeys.htm
There is also the issue of system keys, which always override access keys. More on this here: http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2003/12/29/i_do_not_use/ Legends and fieldsets on the other hand are well supported on modern browsers. And they are not going to be dropped or phased out in the near future! For blind users these two are incredibly helpful little buggers! Regarding browser support for fieldsets and legends, here is a sample form that uses both: http://www.amonline.net.au/sand/using/survey.htm Here is BrowserCam results http://www.browsercam.com/public.aspx?proj_id=40719 As you can see, NN4 and the older browsers freak about fieldsets but all modern browsers accept them. Opera does not style them fully and is the only browser that puts the legend inside the fieldset rather than on top of the fieldset border. These are not major issues. For a start you can turn the borders off the fieldsets and there is no issue. Finally, (and this is only personal opinion) if you can avoid wrapping forms within tables, it is worthwhile. Fieldsets are just another container, you can shape them to do what you want. You can float them, give them widths, apply sexy borders. Most importantly, they *aid* accessibility while tables around or within forms can cause accessibility issues. 2cents Russ > > no worries, > > accesskey is very important for those who use a keyboard to navigate a > page - as it can allow a keystroke to give focus to the label. Grouping > form fields with the correct tags is far better than using say a table > cell which can I believe adds a bit of confusion for screen reader > users? Roger Hudson's presentation is good in this regard. > > Regarding fieldset, I've found Opera tends to not respond to colouring > of borders - sets as #000 by default. Anyone else seen this? > > Cheers > James > > Andrew Cheong wrote: > >> are they going to (or even currently) support attributes such as "accesskey" >> or "tabindex"? because accesskey does not seem all that important, and i >> feel like it is one of the things on its way to deprecation. even the >> fieldset/legend seems a little shaky. grouping input fields is good i >> guess, but i fear w3c might even deem that unnecessary >> ***************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *****************************************************
