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Shockwave keyboard focus

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From: J.M.Gray
Date: Oct 20, 2004 5:58AM






Shockwave keyboard focus




I have a problem with embedded Shockwave objects in a web page.


In the past we've distributed self-assessment questions to students on CD-ROM, and have put a great deal of effort into making these fully accessible.  We've recently decided to attempt to put these on a website instead, and are falling down at the first accessibility hurdle - keyboard navigation.

My problem is this.  You open the html page in Internet Explorer with the shockwave object and the shockwave object has keyboard focus - all is fine.  You switch to a different application (using mouse or Alt-TAB) then back to the html page.  Now the browser window, not the html page, has focus and I can't seem to shift the focus back to the shockwave object.  The tab key is about the only thing that the shockwave is picking up, but not things like RETURN to activate a button.  All works fine again if you click on the shockwave object.  I'd really like to see it work like Flash, where you tab in, through, and out of the object easily.

I've tried putting onFocus javascript to force the focus from the html body onto the shockwave object and I've tried adding an accesskey="x" to the object. The focus doesn't seem to be getting to the html, so neither of these work.

The only "solution" I have at the moment is to do CTRL-I quickly twice as this opens and closes the Favourites panel and leaves the focus back in the shockwave object at the end of it.  Personally I think this is a bit flakey and don't really want to let end users have to do it.

Am I missing something obvious, or is this just "default functionality" with Shockwave?


Jenny



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Jenny Gray

Open University

LTS Media (OUBS Team)