In a web browser, an access key or accesskey allows a computer user immediately to jump to a specific part of a web page via the keyboard. They were introduced in 1999 and quickly achieved near-universal browser support.
In the summer of 2002, a Canadian Web Accessibility consultancy did an informal survey to see if implementing accesskeys caused issues for users of adaptive technology, especially screen reading technology used by blind and low vision users. These users require numerous keyboard shortcuts to access web pages, as “pointing and clicking” a mouse is not an option for them. Their research showed that most key stroke combinations did in fact present a conflict for one or more of these technologies, and their final recommendation was to avoid using accesskeys altogether.
In XHTML 2, a revised web authoring language, the HTML Working Group of the World Wide Web Consortium deprecated the accesskey attribute in favor of the XHTML Role Access Module. However, XHTML 2 has been retired in favor of HTML 5, which (as of August 2009) continues to permit accesskeys.
Read more about Access Key: Access in Different Browsers, Specifying Access Keys, Use of Standard Access Key Mappings
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