Using Flash comboboxes with Jaws

Question

I'm working on a project for a government agency which requires 508 compliance. Our product is written for Flash 10 in ActionScript 3 using Flash CS4. We are doing this 100% programatically. We have almost all of the elements working properly, but when accessing combobox components, we have a problem.

The combobox can be tabbed to directly with no problem, and the drop-down can be navigated directly with the arrow keys. However, when navigating, it reads the last item in the dropdown, not the current. For example, consider a combobox with the list of selections: first, second. Jaws reads the prompt fine, but when we press the down arrow to select the first item, it reads nothing. Pressing the down arrow again (so "second" is selected) causes it to read "first". Pressing down a final time causes it to read "second".

I am completely baffled by this, and it is probably as likely that we don't know how to use Jaws, or that Flash simply can't support this function properly. If you have any suggestions for how we can resolve this, I would really appreciate it.

Answer 1

I'm a Jaws user and have never found an accessible flash application. I'd bet this is a limitation of flash/jaws, and there's nothing you can do about it. Another freely available screen reader that has flash support is http://www.nvda-project.org You could always try your app out with it and Firefox. Apparently combo boxes have had problems in the past. This is a quote from a source that's several years old. "There is a known issue with screen readers and the combo box, list box and data grid components. The Macromedia Flash Player 7 is not able to pass information past the first instance of one of these objects without entering forms mode. This significantly reduces the usefulness of these components." The source can be found at http://www.webreference.com/authoring/flash2/2.html