Re: Newbie question: Section 508 and "full keyboard access" on Mac OS X
Re: Newbie question: Section 508 and "full keyboard access" on Mac OS X
- Subject: Re: Newbie question: Section 508 and "full keyboard access" on Mac OS X
- From: Bill Cheeseman <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 01 Sep 2003 05:31:07 -0400
on 03-09-01 1:04 AM, Smith Kennedy at email@hidden wrote:
>
However, Macintosh systems have traditionally only allowed tabbing to
>
move the user between certain types of controls. I believe they are
>
the text-related ones, such as text areas, text boxes, etc. Buttons,
>
pop-up menus, checkboxes and radio buttons have always been basically
>
inaccessible without a mouse. This seems to be true in normal apps as
>
well as in some Web browsers, including Safari. Lately, there have
>
been things that are supposed to allow "full keyboard access" to all
>
GUI controls, but I haven't found that it extends to all applications.
>
Perhaps only Cocoa apps inherited that capability automagically? It is
>
not clear to me. But if that was all that Apple was relying on, that
>
would be incomplete.
You don't make it clear whether you have turned on Full Keyboard Access on a
Mac and tried it out. From your comments about Safari, I gather that you
have not. Under Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar," launch System Preferences, open the
Keyboard preference pane, click the Full Keyboard Access tab, check the
"Turn on full keyboard access" checkbox, and click the "Any control" radio
button. Or ask the vendor to do it for you when they set up your computer.
Then you will be able to tab among all controls on the screen, not just text
boxes and lists, and use the arrow keys and the space bar to select
individual elements like tabs and radio buttons and menu items and click on
selected controls.
Certainly all Cocoa applications implement these accessibility features
automatically, and most of Apple's applications these days are Cocoa
applications (whether written in Objective-C or Java, or another language).
But a little testing shows me that it works on the Finder, too, which is not
a Cocoa application. I'm quite confident that all Carbon applications
written using Apple's latest APIs are also fully accessible, because Apple's
APIs do support accessibility. You can test other Apple applications
yourself easily on your own computer.
I'm surprised you single out Safari as not being accessible by keyboard,
when in fact it is. It is a Cocoa application and the Cocoa APIs supply this
capability automatically. I did notice with a quick look just now that the
Reload and Add Bookmark buttons at the top of a Safari browser window are
apparently not keyboard accessible even when enabled, which is a glitch that
Apple should fix. However, both of those commands are also menu items with
keyboard equivalents, and in addition the entire Safari menu bar and all
menu items in Safari are accessible by keyboard, so the functionality is
keyboard accessible. A couple of tests showed me that editable fields on a
Web page, such as the Google search box, are also keyboard accessible.
There are a great many additional accessibility features available in the
Universal Access preference pane in System Preferences, and you can enable
additional speech control capabilities in the Speech preference pane. You
can even write your own AppleScripts and install them as Speakable Items.
For more information, open Mac Help from the Help menu in the Finder. The
Help menu is the best place to go first when you want to find information
like this. Type a good search term, such as "accessibility," into the search
field and press Return. You'll receive a few dozen references to Apple Help
topics that would have answered your questions.
One of the topics, for example, responds to a user's inquiry when "Full
Keyboard Access doesn't work with an application." It explains that, if you
encounter a third-party application that is not keyboard accessible, you
should be sure to get the latest, Mac OS X-capable version of it from its
developer.
To me, this suggests that some third-party applications that will run on Mac
OS X might not be fully keyboard accessible due to the developer's failure
to take advantage of up-to-date Mac OS X features and APIs. Are your friends
suggesting that there are no third-party applications that will run on
Windows XP but that fail to take full advantage of Windows accessibility
features? -- I doubt it. I'm sure Microsoft will tell you, as will Apple,
that they do everything they can to make accessibility technology available
to third-party developers, but that it is the third-party developers who are
responsible for making sure it works in their own applications. In
particular, older applications that were written before the accessibility
APIs were available might require updating, although many older Mac
applications gain the benefit of the new accessibility features
automatically, without needing rewriting or recompiling. In the case of
Apple's Mac OS X, all a third-party developer has to do is use the
Apple-provided APIs for user controls.
As a lawyer with a keen interest in accessibility issues, I am satisfied
that Macintosh computers and Mac OS X are accessible within the requirements
of the law, and then some. As a third-party Mac OS X developer, I have
written a utility to help other developers make sure their applications take
full and proper advantage of the accessibility features available in Mac OS
X 10.2 "Jaguar" and newer. Download the free thirty-day trial version of
PreFab UI Browser at <
http://www.prefab.com/uibrowser/> and read the
documentation available via its Help menu for more information.
--
Bill Cheeseman - email@hidden
Quechee Software, Quechee, Vermont, USA
http://www.quecheesoftware.com
The AppleScript Sourcebook -
http://www.AppleScriptSourcebook.com
Vermont Recipes -
http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/VermontRecipes
_______________________________________________
accessibility-dev mailing list | email@hidden
Help/Unsubscribe/Archives:
http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/accessibility-dev
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.