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Usage

The behavior of accesskeys differs widely between browsers.

• In Internet Explorer, you press ALT + the accesskey to focus the element, then press ENTER to follow the hyperlink or activate the control.
• In Firefox 2 and later, you press ALT + Shift + the accesskey. If the accesskey is on a hyperlink, this will follow the link immediately. If the accesskey is on a form control or other element, this will place focus on the element.
• In Opera, you press Shift + Esc to enter access key mode, then press the accesskey. Like Firefox, Opera will follow hyperlinks immediately and focus all other elements.

Values

Any single character typable with a keyboard. Case-insensitive. There is no way to specify function keys or other "virtual" keys like Escape or Backspace. Since some browsers require the Shift key, you should not assign accesskeys that rely on typing shift (such as "!", which is Shift+"1" on many keyboards).

Elements

The accesskey attribute was originally designed for hyperlinks and form controls like input and select. In modern browsers, it works on any element that defines a tabindex attribute.

Browser compatibility

Compatibility table legend

Further reading

• The accesskey attribute in HTML 4
• Changes to the accesskey attribute in Web Forms 2.0
• The accesskey attribute on MSDN
• The history of the accesskey attribute on blooberry.com
• Accessibility features of Firefox
• Using Opera without a mouse