Adobe Flash Professional CS3 - Manual (Page 368)

FLASH CS3
User Guide
362
2 Select Window > Other Panels > Accessibility.
3 Select Make Object Accessible (the default setting).
4 Enter a name for the object. The name is read as the label for the button or text field.
5 To turn off accessibility for the automatic label (and hide it from screen readers), select the text object on the Stage.
6 If the text object is static text, convert it to dynamic text (in the Property inspector, select Text type > Dynamic
Text).
7 Deselect Make Object Accessible.
Hide an object from the screen reader
You can hide a selected object from screen readers, and you can decide to hide accessible objects that are contained
inside a movie clip or Flash application and expose only the movie clip or Flash application to screen readers.
Note: Only hide objects that are repetitive or convey no content.
When an object is hidden, the screen reader ignores the object.
1 On the Stage, select the button or input text field to hide from the screen reader.
2 Select Window > Other Panels > Accessibility.
3 In the Accessibility panel, do one of the following:
• If the object is a movie clip, button, text field, or another object, deselect Make Object Accessible.
• If the object is the child of a movie clip, deselect Make Child Objects Accessible.
Create and name a keyboard shortcut
You can create a keyboard shortcut for an object, such as a button, so users can navigate to it without listening to the
contents of an entire page. For example, you can create a keyboard shortcut to a menu, a toolbar, the next page, or a
submit button.
To create a keyboard shortcut, write ActionScript code for an object. If you provide a keyboard shortcut for an input
text field or button, you must also use the ActionScript Key class to detect the key the user presses during Flash
content playback. See Key in the ActionScript 2.0 Language Reference. See Capturing keypresses in Learning Action-
Script 2.0 in Adobe Flash.
Select the object and add the name of the keyboard shortcut to the Accessibility panel so the screen reader can read it.
Test your Flash content with multiple screen readers. Keyboard shortcut functionality also depends on the screen
reader software used. The key combination Control+F, for example, is a reserved keystroke for both the browser and
the screen reader. The screen reader reserves the arrow keys. Generally, you can use the 0 to 9 keys on the keyboard
for keyboard shortcuts, however, screen readers increasingly use even these keys.
See also
“Testing accessible content” on page 356
Create a keyboard shortcut
1 On the Stage, select the button or input text field to create a keyboard shortcut for.
2 Select Window > Other Panels > Accessibility.