Localization of keyboard short cut keys

Question

Are there any standard for keyboard short cut key localization?

I am developing one web application in this key suppose for "Submit" button I have set Alt + S as keyboard short cut key. This will work fine on English keyboard.

But what will happen on other (non-English) keyboards? Do we need to create separate short keys for each language? Or will having one common English shortcut do? Are there any best practices for this?

Answer 1

Definitely, English short cuts won't do. Or... There are two possible issues:

• you will use short cut also used by (possibly localized) web browser or one of its extensions - it probably won't work
• if you have forms with text area or text field where user can enter data, your short cuts might be mapped to one of national (diacritic) letters (ie right- Alt + a , right- Alt + C ,...,etc. means something in Polish).

I do not think that any best practices exists. And I am not very fond of "localized" short cuts - I tend to use applications both in English and my mother's tongue and I really hate memorizing two sets of short cuts... What I think will work best is to give an opportunity for user to re-map keyboard short cuts. Although it is problematic from programming point of view. Alternatively you may decide on creating different sets of short cuts and allow users to switch between them (or suggest their mapping).