Hi Brandon, I'm not seeing this problem of non-working access key shortcut combinations, either in the previous version of Safari or with the newest update (version 5.0.4 released three or four days ago). A few questions about your recent Safari experience: Is it possible that either you or someone else started your current Safari session with VoiceOver turned off? If you quit Safari, and restart it (with VoiceOver turned on), do your access key combinations work? If the last suggestion of quitting Safari and restarting it did not bring back your access key combinations, try going to the web site for the latest nightly build of Webkit at: http://nightly.webkit.org/ Download the version for the Mac, launch it instead of Safari, and check whether your access key combinations work. Which version of Safari are you running? The last release was on March 9, 2011, and was supposed to include improved compatibility with VoiceOver on webpages with text input areas and lists with selectable items, and also add general improved stability with VoiceOver.
Over two years ago, the developers or Webkit, which is the underlying engine that Safari and other browsers like Opera use, decided to change the access key for Safari from just the "Control" key to "Control+Option". (The rationale was that some other software applications on the Mac use the Control key for dedicated shortcuts, but that no programs were using the Control+Option key combination. This gives you some insight into both why Apple adopted these two keys as the VoiceOver keys, and the level of visibility that VoiceOver had back in Summer 2008 that the developers weren't aware of the conflict.) When this was pointed out in the bug report feedback, and they were asked to please contact the people on the Apple accessibility team for inputs, they replied, "There is no doubt that we need to resolve the conflict with VoiceOver, now that we know about it." The fix that they came up with was to have Webkit, and consequently, Safari, use the Control key as the access key if VoiceOver is turned on when the browser is first launched, but otherwise to use the Control+Option key as the access key combination if VoiceOver is not on when the browser launches. So, if you share use of your machine with a sighted user or users, you should all be aware that the access key combination being used depends on whether VoiceOver was turned on or off at the time the browser was launched. And yes, I do know some people who are not visually impaired who use the access key combinations as shortcuts to navigate the Mail Archive site, which serves as the secondary archive for this list (and many others). It is much, much faster and simpler to use than the Google Groups list archives, and I find it easier to locate items of interest, and that I can also pinpoint the results I want with fewer typed words in about ten times less searching time when I use the Mail Archive (secondary archive) site for this list. You can bookmark the URL for the mail archive site for this list: http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries%40googlegroups.com/ When you navigate to the text box for searching the archives, just type in your search terms. (I'm currently using VO-Command-J to move to the text box and then VO-Space before I starting typing search terms in Snow Leopard, but there are other options depending on your navigation preferences and version of Mac OS X.) You can use wildcards (like "*") in the your search terms, to take into account misspellings and alternate words. You can also use Boolean arguments, search for specific authors of posts, set date range, and sort the order in which results are presented. For example, let's say I remembered there was a discussion about OverDrive downloadable library audiobooks and I wanted to find the posts that Bryan Jones made. I could type: from:Bryan Overdrive and press return to launch the search. If I move to the next heading (VO-Command-H), I'll be told how many matches there are, and if there are too many or too few, I can refine my search by modifying the search words, or I can simply navigate on (VO-Right Arrow) to the results, which will be presented in a fashion like Google search results, with a link that gives the subject line of the post, then a short section of sampled text from the post relating to the search terms, including the date of the post at the beginning, and giving the author of the post (as a linked entry) at the end. You could either browse through the excerpts before deciding whether or not you want to read the detailed post, or you could simply activate the link (VO-Space) and read it. Here's where the access key combinations of the Mail Archive site become really useful: you can use them to quickly read up or down a thread. Control-n (for "next") takes you to the next post in a thread, while Control-p (for "previous") takes you to the previous post in a thread, so if your search has taken you into the middle of a thread, you can find out the context of the earlier discussion. These combinations work for any browser, so someone reading the archives with Internet Explorer in Windows could use Alt-n or Alt-p, and you can substitute the appropriate access key prefix for other browsers and platforms. If you want to do a search on a particular word combination, remember to enclose these search terms in quotation marks like "access keys". Otherwise your search will pull up posts that reference "access" and "keys" as separate terms. And if you want the results sorted in date order instead of relevance, add a term like "sort:newest" or "sort:oldest" to indicate how you want the results ordered (e.g., newest matches first or oldest matches first). Don't put a space after the search arguments like "from:" or "sort:" and their parameters, or the words will be taken as search terms. You can also read the current list on the Mail Archive site from the web page URL I gave. The default is to show posts with their subject links in threaded mode, most recent threads listed first. You can change this to time ordered mode, latest posts first, by using Control-i, and then use Control-b to read earlier posts. Here are the access key combinations: Control-n (Next) Later message by thread Control-p (Previous) Earlier message by thread Control-f (Forward) Later message by date Control-b (Back) Earlier message by date Control-i (Index) Chronological index Control-c (Contents) Thread index For more information on the Mail Archive search options, see their Web site FAQ: http://www.mail-archive.com/faq.html#search For an old post that describes how the mail archive pages for this list are organized, see this post: • "Re: searching mail archives?" http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40macvisionaries.com/msg46243.html Note that the material in this post was written 3 years ago, so there are a lot more options for navigating web pages, but the detailed basic description given there still applies. HTH. Cheers, Esther On Mar 13, 2011, at 08:46, Brandon Olivares wrote: > Hi, > > Recently in Safari, access keys have stopped working. I would always use > ctrl+(key), but on every web site I've been on where I know there are access > keys, they are not working anymore. Has the modifier key been changed, or is > this some bug in Safari? > > Thanks, > Brandon Olivares > www.thefulleffect.org - Healing the Whole Person > Spiritual development and healing for all people -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
