_accProps

Availability

Flash Player 6 version 65.

Usage

_accProps.propertyName
instanceName._accProps.propertyName

Parameters

propertyName An accessibility property name (see the following description for valid names).

instanceName The instance name assigned to an instance of a movie clip, button, dynamic text field, or input text field.

Description

Property; lets you control screen reader accessibility options for SWF files, movie clips, buttons, dynamic text fields, and input text fields at runtime. These properties override the corresponding settings available in the Accessibility panel during authoring. For changes to these properties to take effect, you must call Accessibility.updateProperties(). For information on the Accessibility panel, see The Flash Accessibility panel (you may need to update your Help system to see this information).

To determine whether the player is running in an environment that supports accessibility aids, use System.capabilities.hasAccessibility.

The following table lists the name and data type of each _accProps property, its equivalent setting in the Accessibility panel, and the kinds of objects to which the property can be applied. The term inverse logic means that the property setting is the inverse of the corresponding setting in the Accessibility panel. For example, setting the silent property to true is equivalent to deselecting the Make Movie Accessible or Make Object Accessible option.

^* For information on assigning a keyboard shortcut to an accessible object, see Key.addListener().

To specify settings that correspond to the Tab index setting in the Accessibility panel, use the Button.tabIndex, MovieClip.tabIndex, or TextField.tabIndex property.

There is no way to specify an Auto Label setting at runtime.

When used without the instanceName parameter, changes made to _accProps properties apply to the whole movie. For example, the following code sets the Accessibility name property for the whole movie to the string "Pet Store", and then calls Accessibility.updateProperties() to effect that change.

_accprops.name = "Pet Store";
Accessbility.updateProperties();

In contrast, the following code sets the name property for a movie clip with the instance name price_mc to the string "Price":

price_mc._accProps.name = "Price";
Accessbility.updateProperties();

If you are specifying several accessibility properties, make as many changes as you can before calling Accessibility.updateProperties(), instead of calling it after each property statement:

_accprops.name = "Pet Store";
animal_mc._accProps.name = "Animal";
animal_mc._accProps.description = "Cat, dog, fish, etc.";
price_mc._accProps.name = "Price";
price_mc._accProps.description = "Cost of a single item";
Accessbility.updateProperties();

If you don't specify an accessibility property for a movie or an object, any values set in the Accessibility panel are implemented.

After you specify an accessibility property, you can't revert its value to a value set in the Accessibility panel. However, you can set the property to its default value (false for Boolean values, empty strings for string values) by deleting the _accProps object:

my_mc._accProps.silent = true; // set a property
// other code here
delete my_mc._accProps.silent; // revert to default value

To revert all accessibility values for an object to default values, you can delete the instanceName._accProps object:

delete my_btn._accProps; 

To revert accessibility values for all objects to default values, you can delete the global _accProps object:

delete _accProps;

If you specify a property for an object type that doesn't support that property, the property assignment is ignored and no error is thrown. For example, the forceSimple property isn't supported for buttons, so a line like the following is ignored:

my_btn._accProps.forceSimple = false; //ignored

Example

Here is some example ActionScript code that takes advantage of dynamic accessibility properties. You would assign this code to a nontextual icon button component that can change which icon it displays.

function setIcon( newIconNum, newTextEquivalent )
{
   this.iconImage = this.iconImages[ newIconNum ];
   if ( newTextEquivalent != undefined )
   {
      if ( this._accProps == undefined )
         this._accProps = new Object();
      this._accProps.name = newTextEquivalent;
      Accessibility.updateProperties();
   }
}

See also

Accessibility.isActive(), Accessibility.updateProperties(), System.capabilities.hasAccessibility