Understanding Success Criterion 2.1.4: Character Key Shortcuts

Intent

Character key shortcuts work well for many keyboard users, but are inappropriate and frustrating for speech input users — whose means of input is strings of letters — and for keyboard users who are prone to accidentally hitting keys. As a result, users must be able to turn off or reconfigure shortcuts made up of a single character key, or two or more successive character keys.

This success criterion is becoming increasingly important in the mobile realm as growing number of apps more fully enable keyboard controls.

Note that this success criterion doesn’t affect components such as listboxes and drop-down menus that contain words that may be selected by one or more character keys, since the shortcuts are only active when the components have focus. Similarly, components such as menus may be accessed or opened with an initial, non-single character shortcut (e.g., “ALT” or “ALT+F”). This makes the full path to invoking a menu a two-step shortcut that includes a non-printable key.

Note that Accesskeys are not affected because they include modifier keys.

Speech Input users generally work in a single mode where they can use a mix of dictation and speech commands. This works well because the user knows to pause before and after commands, and commands are usually at least two words long. So, for instance, a user might say a bit of dictation, such as "the small boat", then pause, and say a command to delete that dictation, such as "Delete Line". In contrast, if the user were to say the two phrases together without a pause, the whole phrase would come out as dictation (i.e., "the small boat delete line"). Although speech input programs often include modes that listen only for dictation or only for commands, most speech users use the all-encompassing mode all the time because it is a much more efficient workflow. It could increase command inefficiency by 300% if users were to change to command mode and back before and after issuing a command.

Speech users can also speak most keyboard commands (e.g., "press Control Foxtrot") without any problems. If the website or app is keyboard enabled, the speech user can also write a native speech macro that calls the keyboard command, such as "This Print" to carry out Ctrl+P.

Single-key shortcuts are the exception. While using single letter keys as controls might be appropriate and efficient for many keyboard users, single-key shortcuts are disastrous for speech users. The reason for this is that when only a single key is used to trip a command, a spoken word can become a barrage of single-key commands if the cursor focus happens to be in the wrong place.

For example, if the cursor focus is in the main window of a web mail application that uses common keyboard shortcuts to navigate ("k"), archive ("y") and mute messages ("m"), and someone enters an office and says "Hey Kim" and the speech user's microphone picks that up, "y" archives the current message. "k" moves down one conversation and "m" mutes a message or thread. Or, if the speech user looks up and says "Hey Mike" without remembering to turn off the microphone, the same three things happen in a different sequence. A user interacting with a webpage or web app that doesn't use single-character shortcuts doesn't have this problem. A speech user filling in a text input form may find that a phrase that is accidentally picked up by the speech microphone results in stray text being entered into the field, but that is easily seen and undone. To see a video of these types of issues, go to the Resources section of this page.

Benefits

• Speech users will be able to turn off single-key shortcuts so they can avoid accidentally firing batches of them at once. This will allow speech users to make full use of programs that offer single-key shortcuts to keyboard users.
• Keyboard-only users who have dexterity challenges can also be prone to accidentally hitting keys. Those users would be able to avoid problematic single character shortcuts by turning them off or modifying them to include at least one non-character key.

Examples

Related Resources

Resources are for information purposes only, no endorsement implied.

Web apps that use character-key shortcuts and allow users to disable and/or change these shortcuts:

• Gmail
• WordPress

Videos of speech user trouble with single character key shortcuts:

• Single character key shortcuts affecting speech input – example 1
• Single character key shortcuts affecting speech input – example 2

Techniques

Each numbered item in this section represents a technique or combination of techniques that the WCAG Working Group deems sufficient for meeting this Success Criterion. However, it is not necessary to use these particular techniques. For information on using other techniques, see Understanding Techniques for WCAG Success Criteria, particularly the "Other Techniques" section.

Key Terms