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Access Keys Tutorial

W3C notes: "A page designed for keyboard access (in addition to mouse access) will generally be accessible to users with other input devices. What's more, designing a page for keyboard access will usually improve its overall design as well."

In principle, the access key character could be any Unicode character.

If your website has different sections, you can use accesskeys to jump to the respective parts of the navigation. Add accesskeys to your HTML code. For instance, use the tag accesskey=“1“ to jump to the first section,
<a href="index.htm" target="top" accesskey="1" title="accesskey 1">. To navigate to the second part of your site, use accesskey=“2“

< a href=“innovative.htm“ target="top" accesskey=“2“ title=“accesskey 2“>

To navigate through the different pages of the respective parts of your site, use letters „a“ through „z“. On my keyboard „e“ does not work, maybe because of the € sign, so I skipped it.

It is important to make an Access Key Statement on your site, where you tell your visitors what shortcuts they can use to navigate your site, because every web browser has its own shortcuts which can be used.

To use an access key (ak) in Internet Explorer, press Alt + the number or letter, then enter.

In Firefox press Alt+ Shift + the number or letter of the key. Close a browser window with Alt + F4.

To activate access keys in Opera, you will need to switch into access-key mode first.

Press Shift+Esc to enter access-key mode, and a list of the available access keys will be displayed. You can then press the appropriate access key to activate the link or form input. To exit access-key mode, press Shift+Esc again. Access-key mode will automatically exit as soon as you press an access key, or load another page.
You can always close a new window with Ctrl+W.

To use access keys in Safari, press Alt + the number or the letter of the key to activate the link. To close java windows press Alt + F4.

With the arrow keys of your keyboard you can navigate a page up and down.

Please take into account, that an American keyboard (QWERTY) and a European keyboard (QWERTZ) have different layouts:
y and z are swapped, also the access keys y and z.

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*The Person* , *Photoshop Tutorial* , *The Next Step* , *Before Big Bang* , *A Link Between* , *Visions* , *Fonts Tutorial* , *Access Key Tutorial*

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