Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

accesskey and tabindex

As part of the W3C’s efforts to improve the accessibility of web content and interactivity to users without visual browsers or traditional point-and-click browser capabilities, the HTML 4.01 Recommendation introduced several attributes designed to make selecting form fields easier from the keyboard. To use a form control, it must be selected and active. In the web development world, this state is called focus . The following attributes bring focus to a form element without the traditional method of pointing and clicking on it with the mouse. Every user can enjoy these shortcuts for moving around in a form.

The accesskey attribute specifies a character to be used as a keyboard shortcut to an element. The actual functionality of the access key may require a keystroke combination such as Alt-key (Windows) or Command-key (Macintosh).

The accesskey attribute can be used with the button, input, label, legend, and textarea form control elements. Netscape 4 and other pre-standards browsers do not support access keys. When an access key brings focus to a label element, the focus is passed onto the respective form control.

Authors should provide some indication of the access key, such as providing an access key legend in the site or pointing out the access key in context by putting it in parentheses or making it bold or underlined, as shown in the following example.

    <b>A</b>ddress<input type="text" name="address"accesskey="1" />

Tip

Accessibility specialists suggest using ...