On Sat, 26 Jan 2008 16:41:55 +1100, Jerason Banes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Long story short, accesskeys were an idea that worked better on paper
than
they did in practice. They inevitably interfered with normal browser
operation as well as other accessibility features in such a way as to *
reduce* the accessibility of many web pages.
An alternate view is that there is no inevtability that accesskeys
interfere with normal browser operation, you just have to make an
intelligent activation and discovery method (well, not the actually very
stupid one suggested in HTML 4 at any rate).
The intended replacement is the XHTML Role Access
Module<http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-xhtml2-20050527/mod-role.html#s_rolemodule>.
It works in a manner similar to accesskeys, but attempts to resolve some
of the original shortcomings. I'm afraid I'm not intimately familiar
with it, but I believe it also resolves the original multi-mapping
problem you
brought up.
It's one of the proposals - one of the more comple new ones that involves
ignoring all the existing markup. There's another one on the HTML-WG list
that uses existing marup, doesn't interfere with browser function, can
work on an iPhone with zero keys or a desktop with lots, ...
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Jul/0213.html is the
initial mail proposing implementation techniques. That page links to the
proposed spec changes, and other stuff.
cheers
Chaals
A few links on the subject:
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/forms/accesskey.html
The original version of this document had a much more positive attitude
to
the accesskey attribute. Experience and analysis has shown, however,
that
the idea of author-defined shortcuts is generally not useful on the Web.
Moreover, serious damage is often caused by the way in which the
attribute
has been implemented in browsers: it uses key combinations that override
built-in functionality in browsers and other software.
Unfortunately, browser support to the attribute is limited, and rather
primitive. The accesskey attribute tends to mask out the functionality
of
a browser's predefined keyboard control, which is often much more
important
than page-specific access keys. Moreover, browsers do not indicate that
access keys are available.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_keys
In the summer of 2002, a Canadian Web Accessibility consultancy did an
informal survey to see if implementing accesskeys caused issues for
users of
adaptive technology <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_technology>,
especially screen reading technology used by blind and low vision users.
These users require numerous keyboard shortcuts to access web pages, as
"pointing and clicking" a mouse is not an option for them. Their
research
showed that most key stroke combinations did in fact present a conflict
for
one or more of these technologies, and their final recommendation was to
avoid using accesskeys altogether.
The World Wide Web Consortium <http://www.w3.org/>, the organization
responsible for establishing internet standards, has acknowledged this
short-coming, and in their latest draft documents for a revised web
authoring language (XHTML
2<http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-xhtml2-20050527/>),
they have deprecated (retired) the ACCESSKEY attribute in favor of the
XHTML
Role Access
Module<http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-xhtml2-20050527/mod-role.html#s_rolemodule>
.
http://www.wats.ca/show.php?contentid=32
*So while it seems that Accesskeys is a great idea in principle,
implementation brings with it the possibility that it either will not be
available to all users, or that the keystroke combination encoded
within the
web page may conflict with a reserved keystroke combination in an
adaptive
technology or future user agent.*
This potential problem was subsequently brought to the attention of the
Canadian Common Look and Feel Access Working Group (who had previously
suggested the use of Accesskeys M, 1 and 2), and after consideration the
Access Working Group reversed it's recommendation and now suggest *not*
to
use Accesskeys on Government of Canada Web sites.
Thanks,
Jerason
On Jan 25, 2008 10:43 PM, Jean-Nicolas Boulay Desjardins <
[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Why are there removing accesskey?
http://www.w3.org/TR/html5-diff/#absent-attributes
I though it was recommended to be used by WAI...
What are we should we use? Because its not said what accesskey is
replace
with...
--
Charles McCathieNevile Opera Software, Standards Group
je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk
http://my.opera.com/chaals Try Opera 9.5: http://snapshot.opera.com
