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Adobe Flash Professional version MX and higher
Adobe Flex
This technique relates to:
See User Agent Support for Flash for general information on user agent support.
The objective of this technique is to provide an accessible name to the built in form components provided by Flash. Some components, such as radio buttons, checkboxes and buttons, have their own 'label' property. For other components, the developer needs to specify the component's label text as accessible name. This can be either be achieved through the Accessibility panel (for components placed on the stage during authoring) or through scripting (for components that are dynamically created at runtime).
ActionScript 2
In ActionScript 2 the accessible name needs to be set on a component's
_accProps
property. This property must be an object. If the property
has not been set yet, the developer needs to create a custom object
and assign it to the _accProps
property. The object itself can have
several accessibility related properties, one of them being _accProps.name
,
which specifies the accessible name. When an _accProps
property is
updated, the developer must call Accessibility.UpdateProperties()
for
the changes to take effect. Before calling Accessibility.UpdateProperties()
,
it is recommended to check the System.capabilities.hasAccessibility
flag. this will prevent an error on environments that do not support
MSAA.
ActionScript 2 provides the following accessible components:
SimpleButton
CheckBox
RadioButton
Label
TextInput
TextArea
ComboBox
ListBox
Window
Alert
DataGrid
ActionScript 3
In ActionScript 3 the accessible name needs to be set on a component's
accessibilityProperties
property. This property must be an an instance
of flash.accessibility.AccessibilityProperties
. If the property has
not been set yet, the developer needs to create the a new AccessibilityProperties
instance and assign it to the accessibilityProperties
property. The
object itself can have several accessibility related properties, one
of them being accessibilityProperties.name
which specifies the accessible
name. When an accessibilityProperties property
is updated, the developer
must call flash.accessibility.Accessibility.UpdateProperties()
for the
changes to take effect. Before calling Accessibility.UpdateProperties()
,
it is recommended to check the flash.system.capabilities.hasAccessibility
flag. this will prevent an error on environments that do not support
MSAA.
ActionScript 3 provides the following accessible components.
Button
CheckBox
ComboBox
List
RadioButton
TileList
To add and label a component control, follow these steps:
From the 'Components' Panel, drag the component on to the stage, or use scripting to create a new instance.
With the newly created component instance selected, enter its label text in the Accessibility Panel's Name field.
The code example below shows how a ListBox component is created and assigned an accessible name.
Example Code:
mx.accessibility.ListAccImpl.enableAccessibility();
this.createClassObject(mx.controls.List, "my_list", 1);
my_list.addItem({label: "R. Davis", data: 1});
my_list.addItem({label: "V. Mann", data: 2});
my_list.addItem({label: "L. Heart", data: 3});
my_list.addItem({label: "P. Hill", data: dt4});
my_list.addItem({label: "D. Gribble", data: 5});
my_list.move(10, 10);
if (System.capabilities.hasAccessibility) {
my_list._accProps = new Object();
my_list._accProps.name = "Staff Members";
Accessibility.updateProperties();
}
This result can be viewed in the working version of Setting the accessible name through ActionScript 2.0. The source of Setting the accessible name through ActionScript 2.0 is available.
The code example below shows how a ListBox component is created and assigned an accessible name.
Example Code:
import fl.controls.List;
import fl.accessibility.ListAccImpl;
import flash.system.Capabilities;
import flash.accessibility.*;
ListAccImpl.enableAccessibility();
var my_list:List = new List();
my_list.addItem({label:"R. Davis", data:1});
my_list.addItem({label:"V. Mann", data:2});
my_list.addItem({label:"L. Heart", data:3});
my_list.addItem({label:"P. Hill", data:4});
my_list.addItem({label:"D. Gribble", data:5});
my_list.x = my_list.y = 10;
if (Capabilities.hasAccessibility) {
var accProps:AccessibilityProperties = new AccessibilityProperties();
accProps.name = "Staff Members";
my_list.accessibilityProperties = accProps;
Accessibility.updateProperties();
}
addChild(my_list);
This result can be viewed in the working version of Setting the accessible name through ActionScript 3.0. The source of Setting the accessible name through ActionScript 3.0 is available.
For Flash movies that contain form components, confirm that either:
The selected component's label text is specified in the Accessibility Panel's "name" field.
In ActionScript 2.0: Scripting is used to dynamically set the
component's _accProps.name
property
In ActionScript 3.0: Scripting is used to dynamically set the
component's accessibilityProperties.name
property
One of the above is true