Manual test of HTML5 accesskey using two latin characters

There is a link, with accesskey="a g".

Expected result

For users who have an "a" key on their keyboard, there should be a standard key based on "a" plus modifiers, that either activates or focuses the link. For users who do not have an "a" key available, the shortcut should be based on "g". The link will try to open a window with the Github repo for this test, so you can update the results section :)

Play Github!

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…

Firefox 42, MacOS 10.10.5

Firefox 42, 64-bit Windows 7

Firefox 42, Windows 7

Firefox 42, 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 14.04

Firefox provides "Alt+Shift+a g" on Windows/Linux, "⌃⌥a g" on Mac as a value for the accessKeyLabel DOM attribute.

neither key with modifier moves focus nor activates the anchor.

Chrome 46, 64-bit Windows 7

Chrome 46, Windows 7

Epiphany 3.10.3, 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 14.04

Chromium 45, 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 14.04

Safari 9.01, MacOS 10.10.5

Vivaldi 1.0.303.52 beta, MacOS 10.10.5 (based on Chromium)

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

None of these browsers enables accesskey using their standard modifiers plus "a" or "g"

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

IE 11, Windows 7

Alt+Shift+a moves the focus to the anchor with the accesskey

Internet Explorer 11, 64-bit Windows 7

Alt+a moves focus to the button, while Alt+g does nothing.

Opera 12, 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 14.04

shows accesskey as "("

Clicking on the menu with mouse activates the shortcut

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. Browsers that do not assign an accesskey when they meet an attribute that is a space-separated list of single characters almost certainly do not implement the HTML5 algorithm for processing accesskey at all.

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.