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RE: Checkbox Issue

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From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Jun 22, 2006 12:40AM

> WinEyes 5.5 announces an 'inactive control' when the page
> loads and when activated, exposes the Flash content with checkboxes.
> JAWS 7.0 does not present any such control but launches the
> Flash content directly. Please could you explain this?

The inactive control, in case anyone is not familiar with this topic, is
created by internet explorer as a result of a recent security release.
Any activeX control that you want to interact with, whether it is Flash,
QuickTime, other something else, will require that the user clicks on it
or sets the focus and hits the spacebar or enter keys to activate the
control.

JAWS and Window-Eyes handle this change differently. In VPC mode, JAWS
reads the Flash content, but if you are in forms mode you'll need to
click enter/space when the flash has focus. If you enter forms mode by
hitting enter on a control within the flash, this happens all in one
shot.

Window-Eyes does this differently. With window-eyes you are told that
there is an inactive control and you need to hit space or enter. This
all comes down to JAWS and W-E dealing with active content differently.


Flash author's best bet is to avoid imposing this aggrevation altogether
by following our guidelines for adding Flash content to web pages, as
specified at the active content developer center:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/activecontent/. In a nutshell, you will use
little javascript to make the flash appear on the page. If you add an
interactive control to a page with embed, applet, or object elements
then users will need to click on it first, but if you create it with
javascript they don't.

More on the activeX update:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie6/using/techinfo/activexupdate.msp
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Hope this helps,
AWK