Re: Move VoiceOver Focus on Mac
Re: Move VoiceOver Focus on Mac
- Subject: Re: Move VoiceOver Focus on Mac
- From: Josh Scotland <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 09 May 2016 15:30:36 -0700
Hi Charlie,
Currently there is no public AX notification that will guarantee the VO cursor moves.
Try either of the following:
1. Post an NSAccessibilityLayoutChangedNotification with a given set of elements for the kAXUIElementsKey
2. Update the first responder element in your app and post an NSAccessibilityFocusedUIElementChangedNotification
If those notifications do not trigger the VO cursor to move, please file a bug explaining how being able to move the VO cursor for your app is crucial to providing a good VO experience and will not disorient the VO user.
Thanks!
Josh
> On May 1, 2016, at 10:37 PM, Charlie Powell <email@hidden> wrote:
>
> I’m looking for a way to programmatically move the VO focus when certain things happen in my app. For example, the user might invoke a keyboard shortcut to show some new UI in the same window and I want VO to immediately move there so that the user isn’t required to find it themselves. It’s somewhat similar to showing the list of mailboxes in Mail.app (though in that case VO doesn’t seem to actually move to the list).
>
> I came across the following thread from a couple years ago on this list asking basically the same question, seemingly using a combination of moving first responder and/or posting NSAccessibilityLayoutChangedNotification: http://lists.apple.com/archives/accessibility-dev/2014/Apr/msg00030.html
>
> Is it still the case that there’s no reliable way to accomplish this? Moving first responder generally works, but (as mentioned in that previous thread) it doesn’t if the user disables the preference for VO to follow keyboard focus. And firing the NSAccessibilityLayoutChangedNotification doesn’t seem to work at all in a sample app I’m trying. I’m aware of the VO+J shortcut that seems to just cycle through the list of elements set for the accessibilityLinkedUIElements property, but that doesn’t help when I want to move VO to an element (in the same window) because of some user action.
>
> One interesting scenario I looked at on Mac was calendar notifications. I noticed that if I have VO enabled and I’m typing along in TextEdit, when a calendar notification shows up that the VO focus moves to the image in the notification (though TextEdit keeps first responder and VO continues reading content I type into it). This is basically the behavior we want, but not sure how feasible it is (the system inherently knows about these notifications and might have special logic to handle them, they’re technically not part of the same window/app that currently has focus, etc).
>
> Any thoughts/help are greatly appreciated.
>
>
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