patrick h. lauke Posted…

of course, using accesskeys as broadly as this will lead to problems...funnily enough, this lowers the accessibility of the site! what are the bets that the developers who created this site don't use IE on a PC? otherwise, surely they would have spotted that ALT+A opens the favourites. and that's just a simple, default accesskey collision in the english version of , let's face it, a very popular browser with a very large market share (and, if you're using assistive technology like a screenreader on Windows, you're also bound to using IE, so this type of overriding of default accesskeys will pretty much affect the majority - if not all - screenreader users on Windows).

there's no telling which key combinations are safe, considering the amount of different browsers, languages, assistive technology, operating system...not even the old adage of just using 0-9 seems to hold, as - if i recall correctly - JAWS makes use of one of the numbers for its own needs...

sad to see that so much effort was put into this, without due consideration for why it's actually quite detrimental...(and interestingly, for the fourth time in as many days, a link to WATS' accesskey articles

Sean Redmond Posted…

I’m the Webmaster at the Brooklyn Museum, and I just thought I should say for the record that Patrick H. Lauke is right when he bets “the developers who created this site don’t use IE on a PC” (I mostly use Firefox, whether I’m on Linux or Windows). The designers we worked with on our recent redesign were testing on many browsers, but they didn’t know anything about accesskeys, and probably weren’t in the habit of using many keyboard shortcuts in the first place, so the accesskeys didn’t get much of a workout. We’re looking again at the key choices.

Using accesskeys on our site is an experiment with some level of frustration because of issues like this, but I think browser programmers share a fair bit of the blame, since they could do more to stay clear of the key combinations that might be used for accesskeys. It appears that we can look forward to a better implementation in XHTML 2.0 anyway.

Aegir Posted…

It also causes problem in Firefox. Alt+E should open the Edit menu, but instead it opens the Education tab. I use keyboard shortcuts all the time... Isn't the normal way with access keys to use numbers instead of letters?

Sean Redmond Posted…

The more I look into this today (I hadn't thought about the access keys in a while) the more it just seems impossible to find keys that won't cause important conflicts with something.

We implemented accesskeys for accessibility reasons, which I think of as things that are vital for those with physical limitations and handy for those without. However, we have never heard from anyone who is (or who has volunteered that they are) disabled about the accesskeys—we hear rather from “power users” and web design geeks, the kind of people who (like me, for instance) use a lot of keyboard shortcuts and pay attention to that kind of thing out of professional interest. If it was annoying power users but helping others, that would be one thing, but if it isn’t helping anybody then, as Dave Shea says, why bother?

What’s most difficult though, is finding real data on and getting feedback from people who might need accesskeys, whether that means they could really use designer-provided HTML accesskeys, or that they really need those accesskeys not to conflict with other accessibility oriented keyboard shortcuts.

Dan Phiffer Posted…

I think the use of accesskeys in this situation is helpful, but it seems like there should be a persistent way of turning it off. This 'turning it off' would introduce new compexity, which sucks, but could be handled similarly to Ftrain.com's 'display links' toggle, or those style switcher thingies I see everywhere.

Bob Easton Posted…

Access keys have always run into ocnflicts, especially when using alphabetic keys like this site. There is a quasi-standard set of keys emerging that is mostly numeric ... and always includes an Alt+0 (zero) which point to the sites "Accessibility Statement." Alt-0 doesn't seem to be included on this site.

The intent is good, but it looks as if the team missed some Research. The following places have interesting articles:

• The emerging standard, as Richard Rutter documents: http://www.clagnut.com/blog/193/
• Several articles about the problems and conflicts: http://www.wats.ca/resources/accesskeysandkeystrokes/38

As for other accessibility features, Hurrah for setting an easily readable font for body text! Boo, for missing one of the most used accessibility features, skip navigation.

Jim Posted…

not even the old adage of just using 0-9 seems to hold, as - if i recall correctly - JAWS makes use of one of the numbers for its own needs…

Firefox added keyboard shortcuts for all the numbers right before 1.0, breaking every website that used numbers for accesskeys. That was the final straw that made me drop accesskeys altogether. It would have been nice to at least get some warning from Firefox instead of them sneaking it in at the last minute though.