please send them to jb@trace.wisc.edu., Trace Center, UW-Madison ( last modified 8/13/96) Return to Java Accessibility Project Main Page.
Go to Application/Applet Creator Guidelines (Recommendations).
Making Java Applications/Applets More Accessible:
Browser, Java Applet, and AT Devices Interactions- Recomendations
Java Applets would be more accessible if the following five points of interaction of Browsers, Java Applets and ATs could be improved.
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1. Allow browser preferences to control the appearance and function of applets.
2. Allow objects to be recognized for what they are by ATs.
3. Present analog information in alternate formats.
4. AT text accessibility.
5. Focus/Blur problems with Applets and parts of Applets.
Screen Reader, Browser, and OS Combination Used in this Evaluation.
1. Allow browser preferences to control the appearance
and function of applets.
Presently browser text font/size/color, no image, and background color preferences do not affect applets. Although the display qualities of each Java Applet displayed could be specified by the user in each applet, most applets don't provide a means for the user to alter display characteristics. It would be better if the applet could access browser user preferences. The user would only have to define their needs once in the browser preferences. As the applet loads, the appearance and communication modes could be applied. The interaction of the browser and the java applet will require some additions to the AWT. The user preference which affect Java Applet display could include the traditional attributes (i.e. text font/size/color, no image, and background color) and additional attributes which would have to be added to the AWT. These additional display preferences include alternate presentation media (i.e. video subtitles or sound for text), suspending screen updates, a simple ALT TEXT description of an image (Java Applets have no ALT TEXT yet), aural or textual cue to temporal events (i.e. screen changes, Dialogbox, or Exception), simplified versions of the applet (i.e. fewer graphics), list of URL links (like in the Lynx browser), descriptive attributes associated with applets, and objects and actions in applets. The descriptive attributes could describe the layout, spatial relations, functions and actions of the applet, and allow navigation between and access to applet objects.
2. Allow objects to be recognized for what they are by ATs.
Although the Button and Checkbox components are recognized correctly by the ATs, the Scrollbar component is recognized simply as a graphic by some ATs. If an image is made to act as a button, information should be provided so the AT recognizes the image as a button rather than as a simple graphic. This problem is beyond the browser and is dependent on the information provided in system calls by the Java AWT, such as implementing an image-button object or including a descriptive or identifying resource with the image object.
3. Present analog information in alternate formats.
The Scrollbar component and the scrollbars of Textarea components analog state value should be accessible to the user in a nonvisual manner (scrollbar.getValue()). The analog state of the Checkbox component is accessible to ATs.
4. AT text accessibility.
Screen readers primarily access text present in applications/applets, in a line by line manner, based on the (x,y) coordinates of objects left to right, top to bottom. Menus, text on buttons (and the button is identified as a button), pop up frames and dialog windows are generally readable. (JAWS locks up with a pop up dialog window). Java Frame Menus can be navigated by key commands in Windows95. F10 activates the menu, Alt-letter activates menu item with label starting with letter, arrow keys allow for menu navigation, and letter keys change focus item in pull down menus (first letter of label)(Jon Gunderson).Some components of the applications/applets have access problems, which are discussed below. [Here is an example Java Applet demonstrating the different Java AWT components and a Java Applet demonstrating some of the accessibility problems.] Here is a list of seven problems with text access by screen readers in applications/applets.
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1. A Choice component is treated as a separate window by the screen reader, and it is often difficult for the screen reader to get out of. This occured with outSpoken and JAWS.
2. In the List component, the (x,y) coordinates of the scroll bar are are higher than the coordinates of the lowest visible Choice item, so the scrollbar is read by the screen reader before the lowest visible Choice item is read. This behavior occured in the outSPOKEN screen reader; other screen readers may behave differently.
3. TextField text which isn't visible is unreadable (the only way to reach it is to delete the visible text to bring the hidden text into the display area). Active Accessibility is specifically addressing this.
4. TextArea scroll bars are hard to find and hard to operate. Active Accessibility is specifically addressing this. The page down button does not work in a scrollable field. A pagedown/pageup mechanism and optional scrollbar value would be useful on all window/textarea scrollbars.
5. The locational information present visually with the Label component in relation to other components is lost to the screen reader.
6. Text included as an image do not have any type of alt text, so is totally inaccessible. Text created using drawString("") is accessible.
7. The bottom status line of the browser can be accessed from the applet with getAppletContex().showStatus(""), but is unreachable by some screen reader. This is a individual screen reader specific problem, and should go away. Maybe redirect the showStatus("") information to an accessible site (a pop up frame?).
5. Focus/Blur problems with Applets and parts of Applets.
On Java Applet containing pages, the AT often has problems getting into and out of the applet. A Choice component is treated as a separate window by the screen reader, and is often difficult to get out of. When using the mouse to navigate these problems don't occur. The applet frame and Choice component should act more like part of the browser window. In the applet, being able to TAB from object to object would be helpful for moving between objects. Being able to TAB in and out of applets might avoid the applet focus problem.
Screen Reader
The screen readers used were OutSpoken and JAWS in combination with Netscape 2.0 / Windows95. If you discover problems with any other combinations of computers, screen readers and browsers, please email cailling@facstaff.wsic.edu.