I'm glad to see my question about access keys and tab index has garnered some serious discusstion. As a result. I'm going to implement a small set of access keys targeted to a particular subset of our audience that could use them. I'm going to use 1, 2, and 3 for the three most important pages that they go to and I will skip the others that might be used by the general population. The particular audience that I am talking about are travel agents and they even have their own section of the web site for their particular needs, so I feel I can afford to set aside these three keys for their use.
Thank you for your thoughtful information. Ted Drake CSA Travel Protection www.csatravelprotection (the current site is horribly non-standard, hopefully the new one will launch soon) -----Original Message----- From: Geoff Deering [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2004 5:14 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [WSG] access keys and tab index If find yourself in the accesskey bog, and you are trying to make your site WAI-AAA compliant, I would do what the W3C did back in 1999 on the WAI home page (http://www.w3.org/WAI/). They had a WAI-AAA logo on their main page, but with all the links, the only accesskey was a hidden "c" to access the Contents menu. So if they are setting the example, then just put an accesskey to "Skip navigation" or whatever, then that seems good enough to meet this compliance check. I know it is not promoting best of practice by our standards, but that was the W3C WAI site back then, setting the example, so why not use something simple like this if you are doing your best in all the other compliance checks. I say this because those who are making this much of an effort are making a HUGE effort to make their pages as accessible as possible. My point with Accessibility and Standards is always the ROI, and people on this list, I feel, understand that. But to be frank, the ROI (currently) in accesskeys, has little ROI for the developer and user, except maybe for forms, and used sparingly. I do expect others to maybe do it better or smarter, because there is always someone showing the way on how to do these things better. Because they have become such an issue over the last year or so, and this problem has been given more attention, maybe they will evolve in a less muddle way. Geoff > -----Original Message----- > From: Laura Carlson > Sent: Thursday, 29 July 2004 6:24 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: [WSG] access keys and tab index > > > > For those of you that have put together a chart of access keys > > for your sitewide navigation, do you have any good suggestions? > > From what I have gathered best practice is that IF accesskeys are used: > > - Always supply a legend that defines the accesskeys. > - Make sure this legend is on or available from every page on the > site...perhaps in an accessibility statement. > - Supply title attributes on any accesskeys used. > - Keep the number of accesskeys to a minimum. > > I agree with Geoff. Because of the many conflicts, defining accesskeys > seem to be a waste of time unless you are designing for a controlled > environment such as an intranet. > > In Joe Clark's Book, "Building Accessible Websites", New Riders > Publishing, 2002, he suggests that there are at least 36 characters > that can be used for accesskey attribute. > > However, as pointed out previously, John Foliot and Derek > Featherstone's unofficial survey/research concluded that there really > were no useful access keys not already reserved by some application or > other. When you take internationalization issues into account, it > becomes pretty much of a hopeless cause. > > For more details from John Foliot and Derek Featherstone's study visit: > > - Accesskeys and Reserved Keystroke Combinations > http://www.wats.ca/resources/accesskeysandkeystrokes/38 > > - Using Accesskeys - Is it worth it? > http://www.wats.ca/articles/accesskeys/19 > > - More reasons why we don't use accesskeys > http://www.wats.ca/articles/accesskeyconflicts/37 > > Also: > > - I Do Not Use Accesskeys by Dave Shea. > > http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2003/12/29/i_do_not_use/index.php > > Laura > ___________________________________________ > Laura L. Carlson > Information Technology Systems and Services > University of Minnesota Duluth > Duluth, MN 55812-3009 > http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/ > ***************************************************** > The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ > See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm > for some hints on posting to the list & getting help > ***************************************************** > > > ***************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ***************************************************** ***************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help *****************************************************
