Re: Getting VO to read static text
Re: Getting VO to read static text
- Subject: Re: Getting VO to read static text
- From: James Dempsey <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:28:16 -0700
On Oct 23, 2008, at 2:59 PM, Scott McCormack wrote:
Hi all, I am new to the list and am working on learning the
accessibility API and how VoiceOver responds to it. I am trying to
find a way to get some text in a window to be read when it changes.
The text is changed by a user pressing a button and I would like VO
to read the text whenever it changes without the user needed to
navigate to the text block to check it. So far I have not found a
way to do this. VO ignores valuechange events which the static text
object is generating and I have tried to discover what windows like
the confirmation sheets that appear when you close safari with 2 or
more tabs open or textedit with an unsaved document since in both
cases the text elements of these sheets are read by VO automatically
and it seems to be triggered on the creation of the sheet since the
messages are not read by VO with focus changes or the sheet
(re)gaining focus. Any thoughts? Apple doesn't seem to provide any
documentation that relates specifically to how VO interacts with the
API which seems to me to be a glaring hole in their otherwise
reasonable documentation.
Scott,
It sounds like the app is sending the correct notifications / behaving
as it should from an AX perspective.
I just pinged someone on the VoiceOver team. That functionality is
possible with VO, but a user has to configure VO for it:
"Here's what a VoiceOver user can do in Leopard to hear changing text:
1. Turn on "Speak when status text changes" checkbox in the VoiceOver
Utility.app Announcement tab
2. If the VoiceOver cursor is on the text, VO will speak when the text
changes.
3. Consider using VoiceOver's Hotspot feature to mark the text element
if user will need to constantly access this text.
The user has to explicitly choose to automatically hear changes for a
particular static text. The cool thing about setting this static
text as a hotspot is that VoiceOver will continue to watch the changes
for this hotspot without the need for the VoiceOver cursor to be on
top of it."
If you have any feedback on how this works in VO, please file a bug or
enhancement request at bugreporter.apple.com.
Apple doesn't seem to provide any documentation that relates
specifically to how VO interacts with the API which seems to me to
be a glaring hole in their otherwise reasonable documentation.
Please file a documentation bugs for any documentation you feel we are
missing. A VO <-> AX interaction guide sounds like the main one, but
if you come across anything that is unclear in the docs, please file
bugs. (Also at bugreporter.apple.com) and of course feel free to ask
questions here as well.
Thanks,
-James
---
Scott McCormack
Senior Accessibility Consultant
SSB Bart Group
300 Brannan Street
Suite 608
San Francisco, CA 94107
Phone: (415)624-2712
Fax: (415)624-2708
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James Dempsey
AppKit Engineering
Apple
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