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Keyboard access

People with motor disabilities, sufferers of conditions such as Repetitive Strain Injury, and the elderly often find using a mouse difficult. For this reason it is important that a website can be accessed and navigated via keyboard input only.

Tabbing through links

Most browsers let the user skip from link to link using the TAB key. To move backwards hold down SHIFT and press the TAB key.

To test this, put your mouse out of reach and try to navigate a site of your choice with the keyboard only. Or try it on this page. The natural tabbing order on this page should be :

  • the invisible skip navigation link,
  • the home and contact icons,
  • the breadcrumb navigation,
  • the navigation bar on the left-hand side;
  • any links within the main text,
  • the bottom navigation.

Tabindex

The latest browsers also support accessibility techniques such as TABINDEX and ACCESSKEY.

TABINDEX allows web designers to specify the order in which certain elements on a page can be accessed, if this order is not naturally logical. This is especially useful for online forms or where more important links should be accessible first, e.g. the site search facility.

Access keys

Often occuring links and form input fields can also be made accessible via the keyboard by using the ACCESSKEY attribute. A key on the keyboard is allocated for quick access to a link. This guide, for example, uses access keys for the utilities navigation. These links can be activated by typing certain specified key combinations.

In Windows press ALT + access key, on the Macintosh press Control + access key to jump directly to a certain page. In Internet Explorer 5 this only selects the link, you also have to press the return/enter key to activate it. Other browsers react directly to ALT + access key.

The following access keys have been defined for this guide :

0 - Help.
4 - Homepage (of Accessibility Guide).
5 - Table of Contents / Sitemap.
6 - Definitions.
7 - Glossary.

Most modern browsers support this feature. Access key does not, however, work in Netscape 4.7 and is also not supported in Opera (but Opera is considered one of the most accessible browsers and is so jam-packed with keyboard shortcut options that the lack of Access key support obviously doesn't cause a problem).

Government and education sites will soon have to comply with these guidelines for keyboard access. Check the homepages of some government or university websites to see if they already offer such additional help.

This guide lists the access keys on the Help page.

Learn how to apply tabindex and access keys
to your own pages in the Techniques section.

Evaluation

[ Introduction ]
[ First impressions ]
[ Keyboard access ]
[ Different browsers ]
[ User control over presentation ]
[ Validation of code ]
[ Case studies ]

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