Hi Alan,
I'm not the Development Manager at Henter-Joyce, but I hope you don't mind
if I presume to answer your question:
> My job requires that I write Java applets using Symantec Visual Cafe
> Pro. As you well know, the Java intensive screens produced by this IDE
> are mostly inaccessible to JFW. I have had to rely upon sighted
> co-workers to examine and test my programs.
>
> I am happy to learn that JFW 3.5 will feature better support for Java,
> but I am puzzled by your statement that JFW 3.5 will not support applets
> written using the AWT classes, but only the Swing classes. The Sun web
> site that you referred to says the following:
>
> "The Accessibility API provides a clean interface that allows assistive
> technologies to interact and communicate with JFC and AWT components.
> Assistive technologies are used by people with and without disabilities
> and include screen readers, screen magnifiers, and speech recognition.
> Development of this API has followed an open design process based on
> input from experts in the assistive technology field."
>
> Can you explain this apparent contradiction? It would be a real shame
> if the vast majority of Java applets, which use the AWT classes, were to
> remained inaccessible to JFW users.
The Java Accessibility API is the mechanism by which assistive technologies
in general, and JFW in particular, get the information they need out of the
user-interfaces of Java applets and applications. Sun first implemented
this API on the Java Foundation Classes (and in particular, on the "Swing"
graphical user interface library). Swing is available as a separate
download for JDK 1.1, and is bundled with Java 2 SDK 1.2 and SDK 1.3 (also
often referred to as "JDK 1.2" and "JDK 1.3").
Starting with 1.3, Sun has partially implemented the Java Accessibility API
on AWT - the Abstract Windowing Toolkit - the first and rather limited user
interface library from Sun for the Java platform. For a variety of reasons
we were unable to complete this implementation in the 1.3 timeframe;
something which we hope to address in an upcoming release after 1.3. One of
the key aspects of the AWT support for the Java Accessibility API in 1.3 is
that it now becomes easy for authors of custom UI components to provide Java
Accessibility API support when extending AWT components, where before it was
a lot more work (and in fact, this is why we are terming our work for 1.3
with AWT "AWT Accessiblity support for lightweight components" - as custom
components would all be what are called "lightweight" because they wouldn't
have peers; and if you don't understand those terms you can ignore them
'cause they aren't that important).
It is very important to understand that JFW's support for the Java
Accessibility API will not automatically enable the majority of applets that
users encounter today because by and large those applets are viewed from
browsers like Netscape and Internet Explorer which do not contain the Java 2
SDK 1.3, and further those applets are not written using Swing. These two
facts combined together mean that only in what are today unusual
circumstances will JFW users experience better applet access. This will
change in the future as browsers support future versions of the Java 2
platform (and as users use the Java Plugin to run those applets).
As an applet programmer yourself, you have potentially enough control over
your environment that you can directly take advantage of the Java
Accessibility support to use it in applets on web pages (and to examine the
applets that you yourself create). To do this, you must:
1. install the Java Plugin (either from Java 2 SDK 1.2.2, or 1.3 beta)
2. encode your HTML pages that contain applets to invoke the Java Plugin
(the Java Plugin page - http://java.sun.com/products/plugin/ - contains
instructions and a program to do this for you; you can also try the
two JFC sample applets that use the Plugin at the Plugin demos page:
http://java.sun.com/products/plugin/1.2.2/demos/applets.html)
3. either write your applets to use Swing, or use AWT and be sure to
run with Plugin 1.3. With this latter route, you'll need to not use
certain AWT components, as their implementation of the Java
Accessibility API is incomplete
For internal test purposes, you might also try the appletviewer program that
comes with the the 1.3 beta SDK, which allows you to run applets without
first putting them on a web page and encoding them to use the Java Plugin.
Regards,
Peter Korn
Sun Accessibility team
P.S. in general the Sun Accessibility team doesn't maintain a formal
presence on the JFW mailing list. A good place to talk about Java
Accessibility is the Java Access mailing list: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, a
list which the Sun Accessibility team maintains. To subscribe, send a
message to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> with "subscribe java-access" in the body
of the message.
-
Visit the jfw ml web page: http://jfw.cjb.net
