JAVA ACCESSIBILITY
The Road Ahead
Version 1.3
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The Road Ahead
With the release of JDK 1.2, the core foundation of accessibility support
in the Java Foundation is completed and released.
With JDK 1.3, accessibility support has been extended with four
new APIs: AccessibleIcon, AccessibleTable, AccessibleRelation and AccessibleRelationSet.
In addition, the Accessibility API has been implemented in the java.awt
package. The work ahead involves additions to the Java Accessibility API
to cover new components that will be added to the Java Foundation Classes
(and provide more detailed coverage of a few of the existing, complex components);
evolving the Java Accessibility Utilities; finishing the Java Accessibility
Bridge; and incorporating the accessibility support into Sun's Java products.
The Java Accessibility API
The Java Accessibility API is well defined, and implemented on all of the
user interface components of the Java Foundation Classes. As new user interface
component are added, we will need to ensure that they properly support
the Java Accessibility API. In addition, we plan on evolving the Java Accessibility
API itself to include new interfaces, such as AccessibleDocument, which
will provide a richer and more detailed contract to describe the contents
of these kinds of components.
The Java Accessibility Utilities
The Java Accessibility Utilities continue to evolve, though we're striving
to make the changes backwards compatible. Future work may include
a more serious effort on the AWT translators, though we're strongly encouraging
application developers to use the Swing user interface classes.
The Java Accessibility Bridge to Native Code
The Java Accessibility Bridge is the least defined portion of the current
Java Accessibility work at Sun. Each platform the bridge works on requires
a different implementation, and care must be taken in the design so that
it will work on every Java platform. Sun is actively working with assistive
technology vendors to implement the Java Accessibility Bridge to the Win32
platform.
Copyright©
1995-99
Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
To submit comments or suggestions about Java
Accessibility, please send mail to access@sun.com.
