Testing, Testing, 123 - Accessibility for JavaFX

[Stephen F Northover]

Hi all,

We have made good progress recently on Accessibility for JavaFX and have 
working implementation for Windows 8 (UIA) and OS X 10.9.  All of the 
built-in controls have been enabled.  You can find information about the 
work and how to enable the support here:

https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/display/OpenJFX/Accessibility+Exploration 
(this link is background information on the work)
https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/display/OpenJFX/Getting+Started+A11y (this 
link is for developers but describes some flags)

We have tested informally under VoiceOver and Narrator but nothing else 
(ie. for example, we have no run proprietary AT's such as JAWS).

We're looking for folks to help test the code and enter bug reports.  
The work is not targeted for 8u20 and will be removed before we ship 
because it is not ready for that release.  However, it is ready to be 
tested right now and will be spending the next couple of weeks seeing 
where we are.

https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/display/OpenJFX/Submitting+a+Bug+Report

Remember to set -Djavafx.accessible=true when testing.  Currently only 
Windows 8 and Mac OSX 10.9 are allowed to enable accessibility.  We hope 
to support Windows 7 and Mac OSX 10.8 as well, however these are 
disabled.  Using -Djavafx.accessible.force=true will force accessibility 
on these systems.

You can help!  Especially valuable is input from folks who use screen 
readers as part of their normal day.  Try one of the standard examples 
such as Modena or Ensemble and see how far you get.  There are problems 
for sure, but many things work.

Thanks,
Steve