Friday, January 20, 2006
So how do I check I'm accessible on Windows?
We get a lot of problem reports detailing that something in Eclipse is not working well with a screen reader (usually Window Eyes or JAWS).
A lot of the time the screen reader is not following the MSAA (Microsoft Active Accessibility) API and so when you find a problem you need to double check with a tool that does use it. MSAA is the API that SWT calls out to to provide accessibility information.
We found the easiest one to use is the inspect32 tool from Microsoft (Google inspect32 MSAA to find it - I won't post the link here as it may be out of date soon). Start inspect32 up, give the widget you are concerned about focus and it will tell you what MSAA information you have.
And by the way skip using the Narrator that comes for free with XP, it is not nearly robust enough for using with an SDK.
A lot of the time the screen reader is not following the MSAA (Microsoft Active Accessibility) API and so when you find a problem you need to double check with a tool that does use it. MSAA is the API that SWT calls out to to provide accessibility information.
We found the easiest one to use is the inspect32 tool from Microsoft (Google inspect32 MSAA to find it - I won't post the link here as it may be out of date soon). Start inspect32 up, give the widget you are concerned about focus and it will tell you what MSAA information you have.
And by the way skip using the Narrator that comes for free with XP, it is not nearly robust enough for using with an SDK.
