3.12 Provide keyboard shortcuts to important links, form controls, and groups of form controls

Rationale

Keyboard short cuts improve the efficiency of an interface for all people. They save time and effort for users who work in a busy environment and are also very helpful for screen reader users, who rely on the keyboard as their main input device.

"Short cut keys are very important. These are vital to navigate and you have to learn them off if you're blind. At first, this means a lot of effort and a lot of memory work but after a while once you start to get used to them, you can end up being faster than someone who has to look at the screen and move a mouse around." - blind user

Older people and users with arthritis or limited dexterity also find keyboard shortcuts very useful, as they are often easier to use than a mouse.

Directions and Techniques

Use the "Accesskey" HTML attribute to define shortcut keys

To create keyboard shortcuts, define them in the underlying HTML by binding them to a particular action, such as following a hyperlink or submitting a form. For WAI recommended techniques on creating keyboard shortcuts, see using accesskey to create keyboard shortcuts for links and creating keyboard shortcuts for form controls

Explain keyboard shortcuts where they are provided

Inform users that keyboard shortcuts are available, what the key combinations are and what they do when activated. Consider displaying the keyboard shortcut for a command or link, beside associated page element. For example the shortcut for the link to the home page could be displayed as follows: Home (Alt+1). Alternatively, provide a list of all the shortcuts on a page, which the user could open in another browser window, as a reference. Inform the user that the link to the list will open a new window on their desktop.

Choose the combinations for keyboard shortcuts with care

Keyboard shortcuts created with the Accesskey attribute override application level shortcuts, i.e. "CTRL + P" would no longer activate the browser's print command, if that combination were assigned to activate a control on a web page. This can easily confuse users, so it is important to avoid using these mappings that are common to user agents.

Provide keyboard shortcuts but do not rely on them

The Accesskey feature is not widely supported by web browsers, so you should not rely on keyboard shortcuts as the only means of controlling the site functionality.

How you could check for this:

Compare the shortcut combinations to the described actions.

Make a list of the keyboard shortcuts provided on a website, then test each shortcut to ensure that it causes the action described in the list.

- View WAI Checkpoint 9.5