WCAG Keyboard Shortcut Checker

A single-key shortcut — pressing S to save, with no modifier — looks like harmless convenience. For someone using speech recognition it is a serious problem: the software types the letters it hears, so saying an ordinary word can fire half a dozen shortcuts. The same applies to people typing by scanning or with motor assistance, where accidental presses are frequent.

Enter the key and answer whether there is a modifier and whether it can be turned off. The key matters because it decides whether the criterion applies at all: it covers shortcuts of one character — letter, number, punctuation, symbol. Function keys and named keys such as Escape and the arrows produce no character and fall outside the scope, which the page states rather than issuing an inappropriate verdict.

When the criterion does apply there are three ways out and one suffices: let the shortcut be turned off, let it be remapped to include a modifier, or make it active only while the relevant component has focus. Requiring a modifier from the start is the simplest solution and the least demanding on the interface. This is criterion 2.1.4, level A of WCAG 2.1 — level A being the floor, not the goal.