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Accessibility

Your application can offer accessible features for users with disabilities with the optional Accessibility module. You can support either the Java Accessibility API or the JAWS screen reader.

Enabling Accessibility Support

To support accessibility, your application must use the Swing toolkit. No accessibility support is provided for AWT.

To enable accessibility support:

  1. Obtain the optional accessibility module.
  2. Add the ib6access.jar to your application classpath.
  3. Configure your application to support the DOM2 implementation. For more information, see Using the DOM.
  4. Install the Java Access Bridge, which you can download from http://java.sun.com/products/accessbridge/.

    Installing the Access Bridge sets the following line in the accessibility.properties file:

    assistive_technologies=com.sun.java.accessibility.AccessBridge

    It also copies an additional JAR file to your JVM lib\ext directory.

  5. Set the following system property: 
    ice.pilots.html4.swing.accessible
 

    
   To adhere as closely as possible to the Java Accessibility API, set the value to java. 

    

    
   To make accessibility work best with the JAWS screen reader, set the value to jaws. 

    

    
   You can also set the value on the command line. For example, to launch the Swing RI with accessibility in java mode, use the following command line parameter:
-Dice.pilots.html4.swing.accessible=java
  1. Configure other accessibility system properties, if necessary. For more information, see the ice.pilots.html4.swing.accessible.* properties in Appendix B, System Properties, .
Navigating with the Keyboard

If accessibility is on, the rendering panel in your application supports the AccessibleHypertext and AccessibleText interfaces and therefore permits navigation with the keyboard. This is implemented through the use of a virtual caret, since the content of an HTML page doesn't have a cursor. You can use the position of the virtual caret to determine information about the current textual context.

The user can move the virtual caret through a web page using the following special key combinations, depending on the mode:

Java mode
JAWS mode
Character: back or forward arrow
Word: Ctrl + back or forward arrow
Sentence: up or down arrow
Line: up or down arrow

Application GUI

To make your application GUI support accessibility, use standard Java functionality. For more information, see http://java.sun.com/products/jfc/accessibility/index.jsp.

Rendering Panel

The HTML 4 pilot supports accessibility. If accessibility is on, the rendered information in an HTML page can be navigated without using a mouse, and screen reader programs, such as JAWS for Windows, can be used to verbalize the content.

The AccessibleContext interface provides the accessibility functionality. For more information, see the API documentation.


Copyright 2005. ICEsoft Technologies, Inc.
http://www.icesoft.com
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