Manual test of HTML5 accesskey repeating the key for two elements

There are two links, each with accesskey="a". The first link is to the github repository for this test, the second is to the rendered "github.io" version of the test.

Expected result

@@

Play Github!

Value of the accessKey DOM attribute:

See the test!

Value of the accessKey DOM attribute:

Likely failure modes

• In browsers that implement a tolerant version of the HTML 4 definition of accesskey, but not the HTML5 version, only a shortcut based on "a" will work.

Results

This test is on github to enable Pull Requests…

Chrome 46.0.2490.86 m, Windows 7

Internet Explorer 11, 64-bit Windows 7

Successively focuses each element with the same accesskey value

Firefox 42, MacOS 10.10.5

Firefox 42, 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 14.04

FireFox 42, Windows 7

Firefox 42, 64-bit Windows 7

Apparently moves successively focuses each element with the same accesskey value.

Firefox provides "⌃⌥a" (Mac) or "alt+shift+a" (windows/linux) as a value for the accessKeyLabel DOM attribute.

Opera 12, 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 14.04

Shows accesskey as "(A) Play Github!" (but first link only)

Epiphany 3.10.3, 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 14.04

Chromium 45, 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 14.04

Chrome 46, 64-bit Windows 7

Safari 9.01, MacOS 10.10.5

Vivaldi 1.0, MacOS 10.10.5 (based on Chromium)

Yandex browser 15.4.2272.3909 beta, MacOS 10.10.5 (based on Chromium)

These browsers seem to apply the accesskey to the last instance.

All tested user agents reflect the content of the HTML attribute in the DOM attribute accessKey

Discussion

The accesskey attribute was first defined in HTML 4, and an improved version was redefined in HTML5

This is a basic test of whether browsers implement part of the HTML5 algorithm. For users who do not have the key "available" but for whom the "g" key is "available", the shortcut should be based on "g".

Unfortunately the HTML 5 specification does not define what "available" means. At the very least, it should be simple for the user to generate such a key, and using the HTML5 definition which requires the user agent to assign modifiers, "available" should mean it must not require any modifiers to generate the base key.