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Simon Willison’s Weblog

Mouseless

My mouse stopped working a couple of days ago. This hasn’t ben as big a problem as you might have thought, mainly because Vice City refuses to install on my PC so I’ve been playing it on a housemates instead ;) Surfing the ’net mouseless has however given me an interesting insight in to a number of accessibility issues.

Firstly, Flash just isn’t accessible! I haven’t found a single Flash site that I could even start to use without a mouse (most of the time I got stuck at a splash screen). Maybe if sites were built with Flash MX and used the much touted accessibility features I would have been able to navigate them, but as it was anything in Flash became utterly inaccessible to me.

Secondly, Windows is a lot more obviously accessible to keyboard users than Gnome on Linux, thanks mainly to the Windows key providing access to the start menu. If anyone can tell me a way of accessing the launch menus in Gnome using only the keyboard I would be very grateful.

Finally, Typeahead Find in Mozilla and Firebird is an absolute God-send. With it I can surf keyboardless at pretty much the same speed as I can with a mouse, provided of course I don’t run in to any Flash. The only time it slips up a bit is on sites that use the same text for multiple links (for example the Comments links on this site), but even then it’s easy enough to cycle through them using F3. This is supported by this tip from the WAI:

If more than one link on a page shares the same link text, all those links should point to the same resource. Such consistency will help page design as well as accessibility.

Incidentally, HTML Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, despite being something of a mouthful, is a fantastic document if you are at all interested in web accessibility. It’s full of useful tips for making content more accessible, including code examples for the impatient. As with all W3C documents you need to scroll past the extensive preamble and table of contents before you get to the juicy bits.

Posted 1st June 2003 at 11:57 am

This is Mouseless by Simon Willison, posted on 1st June 2003.

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10 comments

  1. It's been a while since I last used GNOME, but I'm fairly certain you can map any key you like to the main menu; should be in the control center under keybindings.

    As for links with the same text pointing to multiple resources, I know it's an old argument but the weblog convention of a single character -- usually # -- to represent a permalink is a violation of the guidelines which is nonetheless quite usable and, if you understand the convention (or have had it helpfully explained, say via the title attribute on the link) can probably enhance accessibility slightly by clearly marking which links are permalinks.

    James - 1st June 2003 12:29 - #

  2. I'm sure you can; the problem is I can't get to the control center without using the menus which I can't access without the mouse!

    I'm not saying Gnome is less accessible than Windows - I've heard some good things about Gnome's accessibility support. Windows is just more obviously accessible, although that could well be more due to my familiarity with it than lackings in Gnome.

    Simon Willison - 1st June 2003 13:39 - #

  3. I don't know about keyboard control in Gnome, but in X generally you can perform a Shift+NumLock to toggle control of the mouse pointer with the numberpad.

    David Dorward - 1st June 2003 14:24 - #

  4. Alt+F1 is the default I think.

    Sam - 1st June 2003 16:38 - #

  5. I don't know about GNOME 2+, since I've only used 1.2 and 1.4, but running gnomecc from the command line will launch the control center. Once you're there you should be able to navigate via keyboard to whatever you need to change.

    James - 1st June 2003 18:52 - #

  6. In GNOME 2, if you go into Applications | Desktop Settings | Keyboard Shortcuts, you'll see an option for "Popup the panel menu". That's probably the action you want. Unfortunately, in my setup, that action wasn't bound to a key, which implies it may not be so bound by default. (Though they may have changed that recently.) But when I bound it to a key, it worked magnificently from the keyboard.

    Jeff Licquia - 2nd June 2003 00:42 - #

  7. You could also run gconf-editor, navigate down to /apps/panel/global and set menu_key to something like <Alt>F1 This is what the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog does for you, but this works without needing to be able to bring up the menu in the first place...

    Adam Fitzpatrick - 2nd June 2003 17:47 - #

  8. "If more than one link on a page shares the same link text, all those links should point to the same resource. Such consistency will help page design as well as accessibility." So, instead of "Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)", we should spell out "Permalink for whatever_unique_title_we_chose | Comments on whatever_unique_title_we_chose (0) | Trackback for whatever_unique_title_we_chose (0)". Silly. - Simon, were you aware of the type-ahead-find shortcuts? Specifically, if you type "comment" and it highlights the first link that says that, you can use CTRL-G and CTRL-SHIFT-G to navigate among the links matching that pattern. Poorly publicized, but very helpful. - Also, I have a request for your next CSS tutorial if you're interested: CSS for laying out forms. What can and can't we do? Must all elements of a form be on the same DIV? What are the cross-browser issues involved? Frankly, the only form on my website is the single-input search, and we still use tables for such pages at work (not my decision; believe me I'm lobbying for more modern design).

    Joe Grossberg - 2nd June 2003 20:43 - #

  9. Ack! Forgot the P tags again! Please delete or ignore the previous comment.

    "If more than one link on a page shares the same link text, all those links should point to the same resource. Such consistency will help page design as well as accessibility."

    So, instead of "Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)", we should spell out "Permalink for whatever_unique_title_we_chose | Comments on whatever_unique_title_we_chose (0) | Trackback for whatever_unique_title_we_chose (0)". Silly.

    -

    Simon, were you aware of the type-ahead-find shortcuts? Specifically, if you type "comment" and it highlights the first link that says that, you can use CTRL-G and CTRL-SHIFT-G to navigate among the links matching that pattern. Poorly publicized, but very helpful.

    -

    Also, I have a request for your next CSS tutorial if you're interested: CSS for laying out forms. What can and can't we do? Must all elements of a form be on the same DIV? What are the cross-browser issues involved? Frankly, the only form on my website is the single-input search, and we still use tables for such pages at work (not my decision; believe me I'm lobbying for more modern design).

    Joe Grossberg - 2nd June 2003 20:45 - #

  10. running gnomecc from the command line will launch the control center.

    Fred Hurb - 30th September 2003 17:00 - #

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