HTML - Accesskey Attribute (keyboard shortcut)

About

All HTML elements may have the accesskey content attribute set.

The accesskey attribute's value ¹⁾ is used by the user agent as a guide for creating a keyboard shortcut that focuses (ie activates) the element.

Syntax

The value must be:

an ordered set of unique space-separated tokens
that are case-sensitive,
each of which must be exactly one Unicode code point in length.

Example

Two access key defined:

accesskey="s 0"

accesskey="A"

Assigned access key by Browsers

Chrome / Firefox: Alt + Shift + Key
Others: Alt + Key

Advanced

If you want to create advanced keyboard shortcut, you can also use the keydown event (or related wrapping library)

Example:

A simple search box form where we want to focus on

<form id="search-form">
     <span id="search-input-container">
          <input type="search" id="search-input" placeholder="Search ..." aria-label="Search for...">
     </span>
</form>

The javascript listen to keydown and if the control key and the key / are the one, we focus on the input

var searchInput = document.getElementById('search-input');
// window.parent because this code run in a iframe, otherwise just document
window.parent.addEventListener('keydown', function(event) {
        event.ctrlKey && event.key === '\\' && (event.preventDefault(),searchInput.focus())
})

Click Ctrl+\ to focus on the input

Rendered by WebCode

¹⁾

HTML4 - Accesskey, HTML 5 - Accesskey