Screen Reader Readability

In Oracle Forms every item should have a Hint Text, Prompt, Label or Tooltip Text in order for a screen reader to have a speakable prompt. Uniqueness of speakable prompts is important to the screen reader user since other clues such as physical location on the screen are lost.

A screen reader user also require all of the features describes in:

Keyboard Access

Prompts

Oracle Forms identifies speakable prompts in the following order of precedence:

Hint Text
Prompt
Label
Tooltip Text

Starting with Hint Text, the first attribute that is not null (after stripping any leading and trailing spaces) is interpreted as the speakable prompt and sent to the screen reader. Not every one of these attributes is available on each item, in which case that attribute is simply skipped.

Note:

The property Display Hint Automatically should be set to No if relying on Hint Text, otherwise any Hint Text added will appear on the message line when any user operates the product, and it will be spoken again by the screen reader.

Display Items

Display items are not keyboard navigable but Oracle E-Business Suite uses them because the prompts and values can be displayed in a popup window in a text-only format.

Attributes Available for Each Item Type

The following table lists the attributes available for each item (Available), the preferred attribute(s) to use for each item (Preferred), and non-applicable attributes (N/A).

Item	Hint Text	Prompts	Label	Tooltip text
Text item	Available	Preferred	N/A	Available
Checkbox	Available	Preferred	Preferred	Available
Poplist	Available	Preferred	N/A	Available
Display item	N/A	Preferred	N/A	Available
Radio Group	Preferred	N/A	N/A	Available
Radio Button	N/A	Preferred	Preferred	N/A
Button (textual)	Available	Available	Preferred	Available
Button (iconic)	Available	Available	Available	Preferred
Tree	Available	Preferred	N/A	Available

Special-case Prompts

Obvious Prompts

There are some fields that have no displayed Prompt because the field's purpose is obvious, typically because of its physical location on the screen.

Non-unique Prompts

Some fields have a prompt that is not unique or meaningful by itself, such as: Associative object names.

These fields should all use the Prompt attribute for the on-screen prompt, and also have Hint Text for the speakable prompt.

Matrix Layouts

Another common construct is 'matrix' style fields. In this case, Boilerplate (Graphics text) and Prompts should be used to label the fields on-screen. Each field should have Hint Text that combines the row and column prompts. If this is a multi-row block then the Hint Text needs to be changed dynamically in the WHEN-NEW-ITEM-INSTANCE trigger to reflect the prompt of the current record.

Using Display Items to mimic Prompts

Avoid techniques that employ a display item to mimic dynamic prompts except when absolutely necessary, such as:

Prompts that need to be shown with special characteristics, such as a bevel (the real Prompt attribute has no such property).
Desirable clipping behavior of display items, that is, the text can never render beyond the width of the display item (the real Prompt attribute has no width property).
The prompt must be multi-line (although the Prompt attribute does support multi-line text, it requires the developer to place the carriage return character in the appropriate spot, which may not remain intact after translation. In contrast, boilerplate or a display item can automatically wrap the text).

If a display item must be used for an on-screen dynamic prompt, add Hint Text to the associated field so that the screen reader will still have access to a speakable prompt.

Note that if display items are used for this purpose, there must be code in the KEY-CLRFRM trigger to repopulate the fields otherwise their value will disappear if the user does a Clear Form.

Graphics Text

Graphics text, also called boilerplate text, should be avoided. On-screen graphics text should be done with the Prompt and Label attributes wherever possible. If graphics text must be used, then an associated item must have Hint Text with similar text that can be communicated through a screen reader when that item takes focus.

Additional Attributes

Oracle Forms thought it would be useful to have a screen reader speak additional attributes about certain items by appending the attribute after the speakable prompt.

Item	Attribute	Text Appended to Prompt
Text item	Required	Required
Text item	List of Values	List of Values
Text item	Required and List of Values	Required, List of values
Multiline item	Multiline	Multiline
Radio button	number of radio buttons in a group	n of n
Menu item	mnemonic key assigned	mnemonic x
Tab page	Tab page	Tab page

Parent topic: Building Forms that Support Accessibility Features