accesskey

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

The accesskey global attribute provides a hint for generating a keyboard shortcut for the current element. The attribute value must consist of a single printable character (which includes accented and other characters that can be generated by the keyboard).

Try it

<p>If you need to relax, press the <b>S</b>tress reliever!</p>
<button accesskey="s">Stress reliever</button>

b {
  text-decoration: underline;
}

The way to activate the accesskey depends on the browser and its platform:

Windows Linux Mac
Firefox Alt + Shift + key Control + Option + key or Control + Alt + key
MS Edge Alt + key Control + Option + key
or Control + Option + Shift + key 		Control + Option + key
Google Chrome
Safari n/a Control + Option + key
Opera Alt + key Control + Alt + key

Accessibility concerns

There are numerous concerns with the accesskey attribute:

  • An accesskey value can conflict with a system or browser keyboard shortcut, or assistive technology functionality. What may work for one combination of operating system, assistive technology, and browser may not work with other combinations.
  • Certain accesskey values may not be present on certain keyboards, especially when internationalization is a concern. So adapting to specific languages could cause further problems.
  • accesskey values that rely on numbers may be confusing to individuals experiencing cognitive concerns, where the number doesn't have a logical association with the functionality it triggers.
  • Informing the user that accesskeys are present, so that they are aware of the functionality. If the system lacks a method of notifying the user about this feature, the user might accidentally activate accesskeys.

Because of these issues, it is generally advised not to use accesskeys for most general-purpose websites and web apps.

Specifications

Specification
HTML
# the-accesskey-attribute

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also