2.1.4 - Character key shortcuts

The intent of this success crition is to reduce accidental activation of keyboard shortcuts. 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 hit keys. To rectify this issue, authors need to allow users to turn off or reconfigure shortcuts that are made up of only character keys.

• listboxes
• drop-down

Although these components contain values (words) that may be selected by one or more character keys, the shortcuts are only active when the components have focus.

Other components such as menus may be accessed or opened with a single non-character shortcut (e.g., Alt or Alt+F) before pressing a single character key to select an item. This makes the full path to invoking a menu a two-step shortcut that includes a non-printable key. Accesskeys are also not affected because they include modifier keys.

If a keyboard shortcut  is implemented in content using only letter (including upper- and lower-case letters), punctuation, number, or symbol characters, then at least one of the following is true:

• Turn off: A mechanism  is available to turn the shortcut off.
• Remap: A mechanism is available to remap the shortcut to use one or more non-printable keyboard characters (e.g. Ctrl, Alt, etc).
• Active only on focus: The keyboard shortcut for a user interface component is only active when that component has focus.