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current: QUOTE cite="http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/editing.html#the-accesskey-attribute" 1. If the element has no accesskey attribute [1], then skip to the fallback step below. [snip] 4. Fallback: Optionally, the user agent may assign a key combination of its choosing as the element's assigned access key [2] and then abort these steps. UNQUOTE [1] http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/editing.html#the-accesskey-attribute [2] http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/editing.html#assigned-access-key PROBLEM: 1. combining steps one and four results in the following ambiguous rule: "If no accesskey has been defined for the element, the user agent may assign a key combination of its choosing as the element's assigned access key and then abort the steps" this is insufficient for the following reasons: 1.1. if the user agent assigns a key combination of its own as an element's assigned access key, the user agent MUST notify the user what accesskeys have been assigned to which elements; 1.2. if the user agent assigns a key combination of its own, such an assignment MUST not conflict with author-defined accesskeys; this means that the author-defined access keys MUST be omitted from the collection of user-agent assigned keys REPLACE WITH: 4. Fallback: A. if the user agent assigns a key combination of its own as an element's assigned access key, 1. the user agent MUST notify the user what accesskeys have been assigned to which elements; 2. such an assignment MUST not conflict with author-defined accesskeys; this means that the author-defined access keys MUST be omitted from the collection of keys available for the user-agent to assign; B. Abort these steps
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document: http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html Status: Rejected Change Description: no spec change Rationale: 1.1: The spec makes allowances for that already, by exposing the key to the DOM and by suggesting that access keys be made known in the menus. Doing more than that would be requiring UI, which is inappropriate. 1.2: I disagree; the user agent is the _user's_ agent, not the author's, and can therefore ignore the author's wishes if the user so desires (or if the user agent's implementor supposes that the user would so desire).
The Bug Triage Sub team thinks the conflict between author defined and user agent keys needs to be addressed.
We talked about this on the TF call this week and it seems like Gregory and Hixie are actually in agreement about this.