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RE: Flash interaction and screenreaders

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From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Jul 29, 2005 1:20PM

Thank you for that Andrew. I have managed to enter text with Window Eyes
now by turning MSAA off. This experience has made me wonder though:
What about shortcut keys? As far as I can tell, both Jaws and
Window-eyes have reserved many/most(!) keys for screen reader operation.
So I'm wondering what is best practice is for assigning keyboard
shortcuts/alternatives to commonly used commands/buttons for keyboard
dependent users. Is there a reserved set of keys that no screen reader
will react to, or do you need to turn off/pause the screen reader in
order to user another application's keyboard alternatives??

This is a problem for all application development, including Flash. In
JAWS you can disable navigation quick keys by pressing ins+n, so if you
are using lots of keys you may need to communicate to users how to do
this. There is no reserved set, and there is no guarantee that a key
that is available today won't be used in a screen reader tomorrow. Wish
I had better news for you...

AWK
Andrew Kirkpatrick
Principal Accessibility Engineer, Macromedia
<EMAIL REMOVED>