Help needed to make my app accessible

By Tyler K. Thompson, 24 May, 2013

Forum
App Development and Programming
So I've developed a mud client that i'd like to make accessible. I have a very simple problem at the moment that i'm hoping someone can help with. I have an NSTextField for user input and an NSTextView for server output. What i want is for any new information added to the text view (anything new from the server) to be read, but i don't want to change keyboard focus from the NSTextField. As it is right now the text view reads just fine (although it starts from the beginning every single time) and the text field reads just fine, but so long as keyboard focus is on the text field the text view (or text area, whichever you prefer) won't read.

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By Pat Pound on Monday, May 27, 2013 - 14:13

while it doesn'tanswer your specific question, here is a link to a piece I've written about testing iOS apps for accessibility. patstapestry.wordpress.com

By Eirik the Red on Monday, May 27, 2013 - 23:53

Hi, Tyler. The UIAccessibilityPostNotification function might be of use to you. It takes two parameters: the type of notification and the text to speak. Here's a sample method that I've used in the past to make VO speak text: - (void) speakText: (NSString*) textToSpeak { UIAccessibilityPostNotification(UIAccessibilityAnnouncementNotification, textToSpeak); }

Do you have the OSX equivalent of that function? i've tried using NSAccessibility, however i can't find anything for NSAccessibilityAnnouncementNotification -- am i missing the obvious here? EDIT: I've tried NSAccessibilityPostNotification(NSAccessibilityValueChangedNotification, @"HELLO WORLD"); and i'm getting this: [__NSCFConstantString accessibilityIsIgnored]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x7fff7c5fc2e0