I asked this question early yesterday on the accessibility-dev list and
received no answers, so I thought I would try here.
Using my UI Browser application <pfiddlesoft.com/uibrowser>, I am seeing a new
"AXSections" accessibility attribute in all windows of all applications in OS X
10.11 El Capitan, but I can find no reference to it online and no documentation
for it. Can anybody enlighten me as to what it is and how it is meant to be
used in assistive applications for persons with disabilities, or point me to
documentation?
The AXSections attribute returns an array of dictionaries, where each
dictionary has three items with keys "SectionDescription", "SectionObject" and
"SectionUniqueID".
As you can see from the examples below, I have run across a total of four kinds
of unique IDs for AXSections attributes, so far; namely, AXContent,
AXContentNavigator, AXTopLevelNavigator, and AXSearch. From these, and from the
nature of the standard UI elements that are associated with them, I suspect
that AXSections is a new attribute designed to categorize key functional
sections of any application window into a very small number of core operations
that are common to most applications. This could be used to help assistive
applications guide users to the most important parts of any application window.
(However, I don't understand why the AXSections attribute is marked as
settable.)
For example, the AXSections attribute in a TextEdit window contains two array
items:
SectionDescription = "content"
SectionObject = an AXUIElementRef object
SectionUniqueID = "AXContent"
SectionDescription = "top level navigator"
SectionObject = an AXUIElement object
SectionUniqueID = "AXTopLevelNavigator
A Finder window's AXSections attribute adds a third kind:
SectionDescription = "search"
SectionObject = an AXUIElementRef object
SectionUniqueID = "AXSearch"
An Xcode window's attribute adds a fourth:
SectionDescription = "content navigator"
SectionObject = an AXUIElementRef object
SectionUniqueID = "AXContentNavigator"
The AXUIElementRef objects are always standard UI elements that perform a
function aptly described by the SectionDescription. For example, the AXContent
item for a TextEdit window refers to an AXTextArea UI element, and the AXSearch
item for a Finder or Xcode window refers to an AXTextField with a subrole of
AXSearchField.
--
Bill Cheeseman - wjcheese...@comcast.net
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