Enabling accessibility in Flex

By default, Flex accessibility features are not enabled. When you enable accessibility, you enable the application to communicate with a screen reader.

Use one of the following methods to enable accessibility:

• Enable accessibility by default for all Flex applications so that all requests return accessible content.

  To enable accessibility for all Flex applications, edit the flex-config.xml file to set the accessible property to true, as the following example shows:

  <compiler>
      ...
      <accessible>true</accessible>
      ...
  <compiler>
  
  

• Enable accessibility when you are using the mxmlc command-line compiler.

  When you compile a file by using the mxmlc command-line compiler, you can use the -accessible option to enable accessibility, as the following example shows:

  mxmlc -accessible c:/dev/myapps/mywar.war/app1.mxml
  
  

  For more information on the command-line compiler, see Using the Flex Compilers.

If you edited the flex-config.xml file to enable accessibility by default, you can disable it for an individual request by setting the accessible query parameter to false, as the following example shows:

http://www.mycompany.com/myflexapp/app1.mxml?accessible=false

For more information on the command-line compiler, see Using the Flex Compilers.

Configuring a JAWS screen reader for Flex applications

To use the JAWS screen reader with a Flex application, users must download scripts from the Adobe accessibility website before invoking a Flex application. Screen readers work best when in Forms mode, which lets users interact directly with the Flex application. These scripts let users switch between Virtual Cursor mode and Forms mode by using the Enter key from almost anywhere within a Flex application. If necessary, users can exit Forms mode by using the standard JAWS keystrokes.

Users can download these scripts, and the installation instructions, from the Adobe website at www.adobe.com/go/flex_accessibility.

To verify that the Flex scripts for JAWS are correctly installed, users can press the Insert+Q keys when JAWS is running. If the scripts are installed correctly, users hear "Updated for Adobe Flex 1.5 and 2" in the voice response to this keystroke.

It is important that you direct users with visual impairments to the script download page so that they have the necessary scripts to use JAWS effectively.