[whatwg] On accessibility

[Lachlan Hunt]

Simon Pieters wrote:
> I've spoken to a person who is blind about HTML5 and accessibility. I 
> thought I'd send some of his thoughts to the list.
> ...
> He also says that he accesskeys shouldn't be dropped.

Accesskey implementations need to be seriously improved if they are to 
be retained.  There's significant evidence to show that there are very 
few, if any, safe keys available which don't clash with existing 
shortcut keys in browsers.

http://www.wats.ca/show.php?contentid=43

If implementations can be modified so that accesskeys do not interfere 
with existing shortcut keys, then that's great.   Perhaps they could 
offer a kind of web-apps mode where all Alt+[key] combinations are safe 
to be used by the web page, and then another mode where they retain 
their normal browser functions.  But until something like that happens 
and proves successful, accesskeys should not be retained.

-- 
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/