WCAG 2.1 Article 2.1.4

Hey everybody. Josh with Online ADA. In this video we’re covering 2.1.4, Character Key Shortcuts, a level A requirement. Let me jump into the description. 

If a keyboard shortcut is implemented in content using only letter, including upper and lower case letters, punctuation, number or symbol characters, than 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 the use of one or more non printable keyboard character, which would be like control, alt or shift. Active only on focus. The keyboard shortcut for a user interface component is only active when that component has focus. 

So here we have a couple of different circumstances. I’ll go ahead and go into each of these individually. It’s important to understand in this particular article that we’re talking about are, specifically, character keys, meaning the numbers by themselves or letters or even successive letters, like a and g together. That would be a character key shortcut because in that circumstance we’re not using a modifier key, like alt or shift or control, and it’s important because speech input users have a hard time with character key shortcuts, because a lot of what they’re saying into the microphone can be interpreted as a character key shortcut even if that’s not what they were intending to do. 

So, this particular article is going to benefit speech input users and folks who have difficulty with dexterity. So this article has three different circumstances which it covers, and I’m gonna go ahead and break those down individually here. 

Turn off. So if we have a circumstance where we have a character key shortcut that exists on the page, we have a mechanism that will allow the user to turn it off and those instructions will be provided to the users so they know how to turn that off. 

Remap. A mechanism is available to remap the shortcut to use one or more non printable keyboard characters. So that’s saying if you have a keyboard character string like a and g to do a print or something, then when they are in the portion of your content that allows for that character string shortcut, they can remap it and those instructions are provided to them as well that they can remap it something like control P or something like that. And active only on focus, that would be this character key shortcut. 

So maybe you have a character key shortcut that activates a tool tip. Then it’s only active when that element has focus. That way it is not always firing when they are just anywhere on the page. Another notable exception to this is going to be things like select elements or input boxes, like combo boxes, where typing into the field is going to give you sort of a search of the content in the select box. That would be an exception to this rule. It’s not necessary that you have a remap function for the key the character keys here. In a combo box, selecting something like a g may give you a word that exists inside of that list of options In a combo box. 

So that could be considered a character key shortcut and that would not be affected by this criteria. That’s not what they’re referring to, so that is an exemption to the rule. this again also does not cover or does not include shortcuts that use modifier keys. So if you have an ability to open up us a menu navigation by holding alt and F, then that doesn’t count for this they’re specifically targeting character, keys or numbers or punctuation things that don’t require a modifier key. 

Alright that’s all there is for this article. Thanks for joining me and I’ll see you in the next one.