Accesskeys work in Netscape as well, although the implementation is different. In IE, the focus goes to the object. In Netscape, the focus goes to the object, and then the object is activated. So Netscape users might suddenly find themselves on a new page just by pressing a familiar keyboard shortcut, and this is not good!

Key conflicts are almost inevitable for anyone who do not use a pointing device while operating a browser. For a fine example of multiple key conflicts, check out the new Bobby site using Internet Explorer:

http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp 

Alt + A take you to the "About" link (instead of to the Favorites menu)
Alt + H take you to the "Support" link (instead of to the Help menu)

For these two accesskeys, there is a workaround, albeit an unintuitive and annoying one. Press Alt and release it. This puts focus on the menu bar. Then press the menu access key, A or H.

The Bobby site also uses Alt + D to take you to the "Doc" link. Maddeningly, the use of D as an accesskey overrides IE's hotkey to move focus to the address bar. There is no other way to zip right to the address bar for copying or editing... at least, none that I aware of.

It may be possible to choose accesskeys that do not conflict with Alt-based hotkeys in any browser, but to be really effective, they would also have to avoid conflict with all (or at least the most recent) versions of browsers, including those in different languages. If you go to the trouble of researching the characters that are available, my guess is that you would find that many, if not the majority, are already taken. 

I do not know of any browsers in any language that use numbers as menu access keys. If I am correct, it would be safe to assign 0, 1, 2, 3 ... 9 as accesskeys: Alt + 0, Alt + 1, and so on.

However, to be effective, web developers must expose the accesskeys. For example, on a form, legend elements might be labeled "Name (Alt + 1)" "Address (Alt + 2)" and so on. What use are accesskeys if a user has to study the source code to discover them? Or press standard keyboard shortcuts and discover that they no longer work while a page is loaded?

Alan

Alan Cantor
Project Manager
Strategic e-Government Implementation
e-Government, OCCS
416-212-1152
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>>> [log in to unmask] 01/15/03 07:15am >>>
since the only implementation at least that I know of in the browser line up
is ie and since that is broken I would recommend staying away from their
implementation even though it is a wai p3 guideline.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Pranav Lal" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 5:49 AM
Subject: Access keys on pipeages


Hi all,

I have read that one should implement access keys on webppages. I have come
across a few sites that have done this and have found most of the keys a
pain since they conflict with existing key combinations of either my screen
reader or my browser.

Have others experienced the same? What approach should one follow in this
regard?

Pranav