4 Accessibility

Accessibility involves making your application usable for differently abled persons such as low vision or blindness, deafness, or other physical limitations. This means creating applications that can be used without a mouse (keyboard only), used with a screen reader for blind or low-vision users, and used without reliance on sound, color, or animation and timing. Application Development Framework (ADF) Faces user interface components have built-in accessibility support for visually and physically impaired users. User agents such as a web browser rendering to nonvisual media such as a screen reader can read component text descriptions to provide useful information to impaired users.

ADF Faces provides two levels of application accessibility support:

• Default: By default, ADF Faces generates components that have rich user interface interaction, and are also accessible through the keyboard. Note that in the default mode, screen readers cannot access all ADF Faces components. If a visually impaired user is using a screen reader, it is recommended to use the Screen Reader mode.

• Screen Reader: ADF Faces generates components that are optimized for use with screen readers. The Screen Reader mode facilitates the display for visually impaired users, but will degrade the display for sighted users (without visual impairment).

Additional fine grained accessibility levels as described below are also supported:

• High-contrast: ADF Faces can generate high-contrast–friendly visual content. High-contrast mode is intended to make ADF Faces applications compatible with operating systems or browsers that have high-contrast features enabled. For example, ADF Faces changes its use of background images and background colors in high-contrast mode to prevent the loss of visual information. Note that the ADF Faces high-contrast mode is more beneficial if used in conjunction with your browser's or operating system's high-contrast mode. Also, some users might find it beneficial to use large-font mode along with high-contrast mode.

• Large-fonts: ADF Faces can generate browser-zoom–friendly content. In default mode, most text and many containers have a fixed font size to provide a consistent and defined look. In large-font mode, text and containers have a scalable font size. This allows ADF Faces both to be compatible with browsers that are set to larger font sizes and to work with browser-zoom capabilities. Note that if you are not using large-font mode or browser-zoom capabilities, you should disable large-font mode. Also, some users might find it beneficial to use high-contrast mode along with the large-font mode.

RMS/ReSA provides the ability to switch between the above accessibility support levels in the application, so that users can choose their desired type of accessibility support, if required. It exposes a user preferences screen in which the user can specify the accessibility preferences/mode which will allow the user to operate in that mode.

Configuring Application for Screen Reader Mode

Users can configure their session to the accessibility mode by setting user references on the home page of the application as shown below. Perform the following procedure to configure a user preference for screen reader mode.

1. Log into the RMS/ReSA application.

2. From the application home page, select Preferences from the logged in user menu.

   Figure 4-1 Logged-in User Menu

   
   

3. From the Tasks pane, click Accessibility to open the Accessibility tab.

   Figure 4-2 Accessibility Tab

   
   

4. Select Screen Reader to enable accessibility mode, and click Save.

   Figure 4-3 Enabling the Screen Reader

   
   

5. Click on Back to Home to return to the home page. Now the application is enabled in the screen reader mode to assist a visibly challenged user. Some of the graphical content of Operational Insights is also displayed in a tabular mode.

Setting Accessibility to Default

Perform the following procedure to set Accessibility mode to Default mode.

1. From the application home page, select Preferences from the logged in user menu.

   Figure 4-4 Logged-in User Menu

   
   

2. From the Tasks pane, click Accessibility to open the Accessibility tab.

   Figure 4-5 Accessibility Tab

   
   

3. Select Default mode.

   Figure 4-6 Accessibility Settings

   
   

4. Click Save to save the settings.

5. Click Back to Home to return to the home page. Application is returned to default mode and you can view graphical reports.