JAVA ACCESSIBILITY UTILITIES
WHAT ARE THEY?
Version 1.2.2
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WHAT THE JAVA ACCESSIBILITY UTILITIES ARE
The Java Accessibility Utilities help assistive
technologies take advantage of applications developed using the Java
Accessibility API. The Java Accessibility API is one of the core
foundation services in the JavaTM
Foundation Classes, a comprehensive set of graphical user interface
components and foundation services designed to simplify deployment of Internet,
intranet and desktop applications. An application developer
can use the Java Accessibility API directly or indirectly via a toolkit
such as Swing that implements
the Java Accessibility API. By doing so, developers will be able
to create Java applications capable of interacting with assistive
technologies such as screen readers, speech recognition systems and
Braille terminals. Accessibility enabled Java applications are not dependent
on machines that require assistive technology support, rather these applications
will run on any Java platform with or without assistive technologies.
In order to provide access to Java applications, however, an assisitive
technology requires more than the Java Accessibility API: it also
requires support in locating the components that implement the API as well
as support for being loaded into the Java Virtual Machine, tracking events,
and so on. The Java Accessibility Utilities provide this assistance.
Note that these utilities are not needed by application developers -- application
developers only need to be concerned with developing accessible applications
using the Java Accessibility API. Instead, the Java Accessibility
Utilities are meant to be used primarily by assistive technologies.
This release of the Java Accessibility Utilities is not compatible with
JDK 1.1.
Copyright©
1995-98 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights
Reserved.
To submit comments or suggestions about Java
Accessibility, please send mail to access@sun.com.
