Gabriel Wicke wrote:
On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 12:14 -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
You can change them in JavaScript *after* they're set to defaults in the HTML. Shall we change all the "http://foo" URLs to "javascript:document.location='http://foo%27%22? After all, accessibility only means blind people using JavaScript, right! Sigh........
Not quite the same thing, is it? An access key that's completely unintuitive can be as inaccessible as one that collides with another one set by the browser/os
I don't think we're communicating here. :)
An access key that you don't know about will just not do anything until you know it's there. Once you know about it, it's a helpful addition.
An access key that conflicts with preexisting keyboard shortcuts *that one is already using* is a big big problem: it actively interferes with the user's ability to work with the application.
This is why the conflicting defaults must be changed; they are very damaging to usability. If you don't do it, I will.
or one that has a misleading 'alt-x' label instead of a the proper 'shift-esc-x' for the opera browser somebody's using. Which are the users that will have a problem with this setup?
The labels are a separate issue from the existence of the access keys. Misleading labels are quite obviously bad, and it's better that the labels be set *correctly* via JavaScript instead of using hardcoded *incorrect* labels.
Having *no labels* (but the access keys being listed prominently in the editing help and the site's accessibility statement) would also be acceptable. This would be the natural state with JavaScript disabled if the accesskeys were being set in the HTML (as they were until recently).
I added all those access keys and tooltips in 1.3, and only in the PHPTal skin. The 'standard', 'nostalgia' and 'cologneblue' skins don't have these access keys at all, i'd say practically no access keys are a bigger problem than user-configurable ones set from js with helpful labels.
Do you then agree that the access keys should work even if JavaScript is disabled or unavailable?
Accessibility isn't just about adding alt tags for the blind; it's about not unnecessarily cutting people off from or complicating their usage of your site. Anyone who hasn't already, I highly recommend reading Mark Pilgrim's 'Dive Into Accessibility': http://diveintoaccessibility.org/
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)