[whatwg] accesskey

[Michael(tm) Smith]

Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt at myrealbox.com>, 2008-01-27 23:02 +0000:

[...]
> The specification could include an explicit statement of the form "UAs
> must ignore the accesskey= attribute", but any such statement would be
> in the yet-to-be-written "Rendering" section.

That statement would conflict with existing, long-standing
requirements that a number of large mobile operators have
published and that have been followed by the vendors providing
compatible browsers for their services, as well as content
providers wanting to deliver compatible content for customers of
those operators using those services.

And market realities will require that statement to be ignored by
any browser vendor wanting to get their product preinstalled on
handsets destined for use with carrier networks in Japan (and I
think in other markets as well) and have it be compatible with
user expectations of existing content.

A browser that doesn't support accesskey is going to break/degrade
the expected user experience of that content. So any browser that
is looking to compete in the market with the existing browsers in
Japan intended for use with that content would never be accepted
or shipped by device makers targeting that market, nor by the
mobile operators their devices are targeted/branded for -- if that
browser is intended for the same use case as the core browsers
already shipped on handsets here.

And even if it were possible to convince the device makers and
carriers, making accesskey non-conforming would push all the
compatibility/content-migration costs onto the thousands of
content providers who'd be forced to remove from all their
existing content the numbered image markers they currently have in
it to visually indicate accesskey associations.

  --Mike

-- 
Michael(tm) Smith
http://people.w3.org/mike/
http://sideshowbarker.net/
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