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Technique FLASH16:Making actions keyboard accessible by using the click event on standard components

Obsolete

Adobe stopped updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020, and encourages authors interested in creating accessible web content to use HTML.

About this Technique

This technique is not referenced from any Understanding document.

This technique applies to content implemented in Adobe Flash.

Description

The objective of this technique is to demonstrate how to invoke a scripting function in a way that is keyboard accessible by attaching it to keyboard-accessible, standard Flash components provided by the Adobe Flash Professional authoring tool. In order to ensure that scripted actions can be invoked from the keyboard, they are associated with standard Flash components such as the Button component. The click event of these components is device independent. While the "CLICK" event is a mouse event, it is actually mapped to the default action of a button. The default action occurs when the user clicks the element with a mouse, but it also occurs when the user focuses the element and hits the space key, and when the element is triggered via the accessibility API.

Examples

Example 1: Click event on a button

This example shows a button that uses the MouseEvent.CLICK event to change its label. This event will fire both on mouse click and when the space key is pressed 

import fl.controls.Button;
import fl.accessibility.ButtonAccImpl;

ButtonAccImpl.enableAccessibility();

var testBtn = new Button();
testBtn.label = "click me";
testBtn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, clickHandler, false);
addChild(testBtn);
testBtn.x = testBtn.y = 10;

function clickHandler(e) {
  e.target.label = "Thanks";
}

This approach is demonstrated in the working version of click event on a button. The source of click event on a button is available.

Example 2: Pending example

The wiki source for FLASH16 indicated there was an action to add a second example.

Tests

Procedure

When a Flash Movie contains interactive controls, confirm that:

  1. Standard Flash components are used for the controls
  2. The controls use the "click" event

Expected Results

  • #1 and #2 are true
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