Accessibility
September 2, 2006: Much has changed since I implemented accesskeys at this site October of 2003. I’m no longer in favor of using them and we’ve learned since then that while accesskeys are a good idea in theory, in reality they interfere with other applications far too often, they tend to be different for nearly every site out there, and their addition to sites cause far more problems than they help to resolve.
A new design is in the works behind the scenes, so before long the design you see here, along with all the added accesskeys, will disappear.
The upcoming new design will not just be a visual change, though. As time marches on, I continue to learn and grow, so the upcoming new design will implement newer and better accessibility features, much improved CSS, and many other improvements. Stay tuned.
October, 2003: While this site has been created to be accessibility-friendly and already works well with images turned off, no stylesheets, or with text-only browsers, keyboard-only navigation needed improvement. Accesskey support has now been added to improve site navigation without the need for a mouse.
Accesskeys at This Site
In the site’s main navigation at the bottom of the page you’ll see an underlined letter representing the keyboard accesskey, much like you’d see anywhere on your computer to represent the corresponding keystroke.
- At any time within the site you can use these accesskeys, such as ALT+h to return to the home page of the site.
- Internet Explorer users may need to click ALT+[Accesskey], then Enter.
- Opera 7.02 now supports the accesskey. Opera users need to click SHIFT+ESC+[Accesskey].
Below is a list of the accesskeys available at this site:
Main Navigation
- h = Home
- a = Abundant Archives
- l = Luscious Links
- u = Subscribe
- t = About
- c = Contact
- s = Search
- m = Sitemap
- t = Attack on America
- o = Colophon
- 2 = Accessibility
Other Accesskeys
- 3 = Skip to bottom of page navigation
- 4 = Sidebar Search
- 5 = Sidebar
- p = Previous page. Available on most pages.
- n = Next page. Available on most pages.
The Addition of Accesskeys
Why Go to All this Effort?
Increasingly more people are suffering from repetitive strain injury (RSI), especially from so much computer use, preventing or reducing ability to use a mouse. Additionally, many people prefer to use keystrokes rather than a mouse. When handled properly, keystrokes may actually be a faster way to navigate a webpage than a mouse.
Isn’t the “skip to navigation” Link Sufficient?
While this site’s “skip to navigation” link is helpful to users with text-only browsers and browsers with CSS turned off, this link is intentionally invisible to many other devices, including modern browsers. Accesskey support can help users, including those who can’t see the “skip to navigation” link but would like to quickly and easily skip to the site navigation with a keystroke.
- For more on Opera’s
accesskeysupport, see the W3C Accessibility Guidelines mailing list thread post dated 27 Feb. 2003 by Jesper Tverskov, Opera 7 supportsACCESSKEY. - For more on the
accesskeyattribute and browser support, see Jukka Korpella’s excellent information, Improving accessibility with accesskey in HTML forms and links. - W3C
accesskeyinformation: Access keys (HTML 4.01 attribute definition, usage information)
The Function of the “skip to navigation” Link at This Site
Visitors with text-only browsers or browsers with CSS turned off will see a “skip to navigation” link at the top of the page. This is provided to skip past the content to go directly to the bottom-of-page navigation. This avoids having to scroll through an entire page’s content to get to the site navigation.
Anyone can use the accesskey 3 to skip to the navigation, including most users who don’t even see the “skip to navigation” link.
Your Feedback Invited
I’m also interested in knowing if visitors have any accessibility-related problems with this site or if you have any helpful suggestions to make this site even more accessibility-friendly. If you contact me with a site-related accessibility issue, please be as specific as possible, including the device used, page(s) at this site that were troublesome and how, and which page elements were problematic. Thank you!
