Access keys. How accessible is your website? Can users move from page to page without the need for a mouse? While disassociated may well sport valid XHTML code, accessibility is another question all together.

Accessibility means, amongst other things, making allowance for website users who are disabled and have difficulty using a mouse, thus rendering the usual point and click navigation systems unusable.

Access keys are like hot keys, and allow visitors to navigate websites using only certain keyboard commands. Although I have dabbled with them in the past, they have really only been for my benefit, as no one else was aware of their existence, or what the individual hot keys commands were.

The latest issue of A List Apart, Access keys: unlocking hidden navigation, deals with a number of issues raised by the implementation of access keys and how to resolve them, and has given me some ideas for introducing them here, while at the same time giving visitors a clue they exist. Watch this space.

However, using access keys are only a part of overall accessibility, which requires the careful thinking of a site’s design and structure, plus the use of compliant code in order to achieve. As Jeffrey Zeldman once said, design and accessibility are two completely different objectives.