Access keys
Encyclopedia
In a web browser
, an access key or accesskey allows a computer
user
immediately to jump to a specific part of a web page
via the keyboard
. They were introduced in 1999 and quickly achieved near-universal browser support.
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, 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.
In XHTML 2, a revised web authoring language, the HTML Working Group of the World Wide Web Consortium
deprecated the accesskey attribute in favor of the XHTML Role Access Module. However, XHTML 2 has been retired in favor of HTML 5
, which (as of August 2009) continues to permit accesskeys.
In most web browsers, the user invokes the access key by pressing (on PC)
or (on Mac) simultaneously with the appropriate character on the keyboard.
Home
or to emphasize ‹H›:
Home
alternatively, the following CSS can be used to indicate the character:
*[accesskey]:after {content:' [' attr(accesskey) ']'}
Emphasize <em> isn’t necessary, but can be useful to the user. It helps them identify which key to press to navigate to where they want to. Another possible way of displaying which accesskeys do what is to create a page with all the accesskeys displayed. Or the webmaster could do both. Another option for the end user is to install a user script such as FireFox Access Bar for GreaseMonkey.
and ultimatebb
.
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
, an access key or accesskey allows a computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
user
User (computing)
A user is an agent, either a human agent or software agent, who uses a computer or network service. A user often has a user account and is identified by a username , screen name , nickname , or handle, which is derived from the identical Citizen's Band radio term.Users are...
immediately to jump to a specific part of a web page
Web page
A web page or webpage is a document or information resource that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser and displayed on a monitor or mobile device. This information is usually in HTML or XHTML format, and may provide navigation to other web pages via hypertext...
via the keyboard
Computer keyboard
In computing, a keyboard is a typewriter-style keyboard, which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys, to act as mechanical levers or electronic switches...
. They were introduced in 1999 and quickly achieved near-universal browser support.
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, especially screen reading technology
Screen reader
A screen reader is a software application that attempts to identify and interpret what is being displayed on the screen . This interpretation is then re-presented to the user with text-to-speech, sound icons, or a Braille output device...
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.
In XHTML 2, a revised web authoring language, the HTML Working Group of the World Wide Web Consortium
World Wide Web Consortium
The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web .Founded and headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the...
deprecated the accesskey attribute in favor of the XHTML Role Access Module. However, XHTML 2 has been retired in favor of HTML 5
HTML 5
HTML5 is a language for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web, and is a core technology of the Internet originally proposed by Opera Software. It is the fifth revision of the HTML standard and is still under development...
, which (as of August 2009) continues to permit accesskeys.
Access in different browsers
A more complete list, which browser support the HTML Access keys are compared in the comparison of web browsers.In most web browsers, the user invokes the access key by pressing (on PC)
or (on Mac) simultaneously with the appropriate character on the keyboard.
| Web Browser Web browser A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content... |
Modifier Modifier key In computing, a modifier key is a special key on a computer keyboard that modifies the normal action of another key when the two are pressed in combination.... |
Effect | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amaya Amaya (web browser) Amaya is a free and open source WYSIWYG web authoring tool with browsing abilities, created by a structured editor project at the INRIA, a French national research institution, and later adopted by the World Wide Web Consortium . Amaya is used as a testbed for web standards and replaced the Arena... |
or | Adjustable in preferences | |
| Blazer Blazer (web browser) Blazer is a web browser available for Palm handhelds running Palm OS 3.1 or higher with 8MB of free memory available.The original version of Blazer was developed by Bluelark Systems and was released in November 2000. Bluelark Systems was acquired by Handspring a month later, in December 2000... |
Element is activated immediately upon key press. | No modifier is needed for this web browser used on mobile devices. | |
| Camino Camino Camino is a free, open source, GUI-based Web browser based on Mozilla's Gecko layout engine and specifically designed for the Mac OS X operating system... |
|||
| Google Chrome 3 and higher Google Chrome Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or... |
on Windows and Linux (Note: is required in some circumstances) + on Mac + on Mac (< ???) |
Supported in versions of Chrome >2.x | |
| Firefox Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers... 2 Mozilla Firefox 2 Mozilla Firefox 2 was a version of Firefox, a web browser released on October 24, 2006 by the Mozilla Corporation.Firefox 2 uses version 1.8 of the Gecko layout engine for displaying web pages... , 3 Mozilla Firefox 3 Mozilla Firefox 3.0 is a version of the Firefox web browser released on June 17, 2008 by the Mozilla Corporation.Firefox 3.0 uses version 1.9 of the Gecko layout engine for displaying web pages. This version fixes many bugs, improves standard compliance, and implements many new web APIs compared to... , 4 Mozilla Firefox 4 Mozilla Firefox 4 is a version of the Firefox web browser, released on 22 March 2011. The first beta was made available on 6 July 2010; Release Candidate 2 was released on 18 March 2011. It was codenamed Tumucumaque, and has been confirmed as Firefox's last large release cycle... & 5 |
+ on Windows and Linux on Mac |
Prior to version 2.0 Firefox used just Alt; configurable via about:config About: URI scheme about is an internal URI scheme in various web browsers to display certain built-in functions... |
|
| Internet Explorer Internet Explorer Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year... |
Prior to IE8, + Access Key focused on the element, but required to be pressed in order to activate the element | ||
| Konqueror Konqueror Not to be confused with the Conqueror web browser.Konqueror is a web browser and file manager that provides file-viewer functionality for file systems such as local files, files on a remote ftp server and files in a disk image. It is a core part of the KDE desktop environment... |
The modifier key must be released before the regular key is pressed. | ||
| Opera Opera (web browser) Opera is a web browser and Internet suite developed by Opera Software with over 200 million users worldwide. The browser handles common Internet-related tasks such as displaying web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, chatting on IRC, downloading files via BitTorrent,... |
+ | The modifier key must be released before the regular key is pressed. Once the modifier key is released, browser lists the set of access keys on that page with action and user can hit the desired key. | Configurable via Graphical user interface Graphical user interface In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and... |
| Safari 3 Safari (web browser) Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. and included with the Mac OS X and iOS operating systems. First released as a public beta on January 7, 2003 on the company's Mac OS X operating system, it became Apple's default browser beginning with Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther". Safari is also the... |
for Mac for Windows |
||
| Safari 4 and higher Safari (web browser) Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. and included with the Mac OS X and iOS operating systems. First released as a public beta on January 7, 2003 on the company's Mac OS X operating system, it became Apple's default browser beginning with Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther". Safari is also the... |
+ on Mac on Windows |
Multiple access keys
If multiple identical accesskeys are assigned within the same document, IE will tab through them on each keypress (IE will tab backwards if is pressed as well). This way, elements can be logically grouped in various accesskey rings for easier navigation. IE 4.0 only supported letters of the English alphabet as accesskeys. Firefox 2.0 will activate the last of a group of elements assigned the same accesskey.Specifying access keys
Access keys are specified in HTML using the accesskey attribute. The value of an element’s accesskey attribute is the key the user will press (typically in combination with one or more other keys, as defined by the browser) in order to activate or focus that element. Though the accesskey attribute sets the key that can be pressed it does not automatically notify the user of the bound access key. One convention is for the page author to show the access key value by using the <u> tag to underline the a letter in the link’s text corresponding to the accesskey assigned. For the link below a user would press + on a PC, + on a Mac (the command key can give undesired results) and ++ on Opera to be directed to index.html.Home
or to emphasize ‹H›:
alternatively, the following CSS can be used to indicate the character:
*[accesskey]:after {content:' [' attr(accesskey) ']'}
Emphasize <em> isn’t necessary, but can be useful to the user. It helps them identify which key to press to navigate to where they want to. Another possible way of displaying which accesskeys do what is to create a page with all the accesskeys displayed. Or the webmaster could do both. Another option for the end user is to install a user script such as FireFox Access Bar for GreaseMonkey.
Use of standard access key mappings
As of 2004, a standard emerged using numbers, which promotes consistency and enables users more easily to predict keyboard shortcuts on different sites. These include, for example, 1 to go to the homepage, 4 for search, 9 for contact, and others. This scheme is now in use on popular sites such as ft.com and bbc.co.uk , as well as being built into popular message board software such as vBulletinVBulletin
vBulletin is a proprietary Internet forum software produced by Jelsoft Enterprises and vBulletin Solutions, both subsidiaries of Internet Brands. It is written in PHP and uses a MySQL database server.-History:...
and ultimatebb
UBB.classic
UBB.classic was an Internet forum software package originally written by Ted O'Neill of Social Strata, Inc. in 1996. It was written in Perl and used a flat file database...
.
UK Government recommendation for access keys
- S - Skip navigation
- 1 - Home page
- 2 - What’s new
- 3 - Site map
- 4 - Search
- 5 - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- 6 - Help
- 7 - Complaints procedure
- 8 - Terms and conditions
- 9 - Feedback form
- 0 - Access key details
External links
- A bug report for the MediaWiki software regarding conflicts with Accesskeys – includes lengthy discussion of various problems on different platforms
- A CSS stylesheet to make access keys on a website visible
- ACCESS + KEY = Accesskey (XHTML Role Access Module still flawed)
- Accesskeys: Unlocking Hidden Navigation
- Accesskeys and Reserved Keystroke Combinations
- Changes to Accesskeys in Firefox 2.0
- Ui.key.contentAccess – instructions on configuring access key behavior in Mozilla FirefoxMozilla FirefoxMozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...
- UK Government suggested numerical key standard
- User-defined Accesskeys using PHP
- Using Accesskeys is Easy