Keyboard-only navigation is provided for by Flex. No other work is
required to get it to work, so there isn't much doc on it. The doc
covers what you need to get screen readers to work as that is not
built-in.
It is my understanding that we conform to accessibility guidelines, but
that doesn't mean there aren't bugs. Most navigators switch tabs via
arrow keys. Tabbing switches to the next focusable object, and Enter
can activate a defaultButton. Using tab to switch between tabs is not
an 80% case and, IMHO, would be unexpected by most keyboard navigation
users. Buttons get highlighted as you tab to them to indicate that
ENTER will activate them (assuming you've set a defaultButton
somewhere). That's standard UI in Windows and Internet Explorer and
probably other browsers and operating systems as well.
If you think you've found problems with our accessibility support,
including keyboard navigation issues, please file bugs and our
accessibility experts will help the engineering team make the
appropriate changes.
From: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Amy
Sent: Sunday, May 25, 2008 12:49 PM
To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [flexcoders] Re: Button down event
--- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com mailto:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com
, Alex Harui [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Flex is pretty good, but not perfect. We design for 80% cases and
do
not always handle the 20% case. We have code size and developer
resource restrictions.
The 80% case is that some button should be activated on ENTER pretty
much no matter what control has focus. It would seem to me to be a
poor
UI where ENTER could have more than one meaning. Once there is a
defaultButton, focusing any other Button enables ENTER handling on
that
button. That's the way it seems to work on Windows as well. The
current button that will be activated on ENTER is given special
highlighting so it will hopefully be apparent to the user what ENTER
will do.
I would recommend you choose one button that is the default for
ENTER.
Let's presume for the sake of argument that I have written something
similar to a TabButtonBar, where I want to allow the user to tab
through the buttons and press Enter to activate the highlighted
button. What events would I want to listen for?
If you're trying for accessibility, you need to be able to support
keyboard-only navigation, as is hinted at in the Flex accessibility
documentation. However, when you read the details of the
accessibility documents, they talk about screen readers and ignore
keyboard-only navigation.
When you (not necessarily you personally, but the engineering team as
a whole) were programming Flex so that buttons would be automatically
highlighted when you tabbed to it, what were you intending that the
significance of that visual cue was supposed to be?
Thanks;
Amy
