It turns out the most current versions of KDE add keyboard shortcuts to Qt applications. This is the reason for the unwanted shortcuts in the tabs (section names) and in the QCheckBox (multiple choices). See KDE bug https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=337491. A workaround has been implemented for all Linux and FreeBSD systems (removing '&' in the strings before comparing them or writing them out) but the better solution (besides a newer KDE version) is to add the following to ~/.config/kdeglobals:
[Development]
AutoCheckAccelerators=false