Oracle E-Business Suite User's Guide

Oracle E-Business Suite Accessibility Features

The Look and Feel of the User Interface

The Oracle E-Business Suite Professional User Interface can be run with either the Oracle Look and Feel or the Generic Look and Feel. The Oracle Look and Feel consists of a new look and feel for each item and a predefined set of color schemes. The Generic Look and Feel adheres to the native interface and color scheme of the current operating system. The choice of look and feel has an impact on accessibility features. In general, the Oracle Look and Feel is the more accessible of the modes. Only low-vision users should find it necessary to use the Generic Look and Feel.

To specify look and feel, set the profile option Java Look and Feel to either generic or oracle. If the Oracle Look and Feel is used, the profile option Java Color Scheme can be specified as follows: blue, khaki, olive, purple, red, swan (default), teal, or titanium.

Note: The Java Color Scheme profile option has no effect if Java Look and Feel is set to generic.

Important: Setting the Java Color Scheme profile option to a value other than swan can increase system response time.

Note: Keyboard-only users should set their accessibility mode for HTML-based applications to Standard to use the keyboard-only accessible versions of the applications. To set this accessibility mode, set the profile option Self Service Accessibility Features to Standard Accessibility.

Techniques for Low-Vision Users

Low-vision users may find it necessary to control the overall colors of the application, either to increase or decrease the contrast. They can set the desired colors using the operating system's provided schemes, then specify generic in the Java Look and Feel profile option so that Oracle E-Business Suite will use these colors.

Oracle E-Business Suite by default renders required fields in yellow, queryable fields in a different color while in enter-query mode, and fields that cannot be updated (read-only fields) in gray. To turn off these features when running Oracle E-Business Suite Professional User Interface, set profile FND: Indicator Colors to No.

Navigating the Forms-Based Applications Interface

Oracle E-Business Suite offers a feature that can render the current screen in a compressed, text-only fashion. By invoking the KEY-F9 function, all of the prompts and values of items in the current window, (just the current row for multi-row blocks), are displayed within a popup window in a text-only format. Each row can be spoken by a screen reader. Included in this list are the values of display items or disabled items that otherwise would not be easily discernible with a screen reader because they are not keyboard-navigable.

Similarly, the KEY-F8 function shows a list of all buttons within the window and their access keys, which otherwise would not be obtainable if they were not navigable.

Note: The KEY-F8 and KEY-F9 functions may not be mapped to the corresponding function keys in your system. Use the Keys window (Help > Keyboard Help... or Ctrl+k) to view the current mappings for your system.

Techniques for Physically Disabled Users

Tabs in Oracle E-Business Suite can be switched from the keyboard by using the List Tab Pages function (typically F2).

Oracle E-Business Suite includes a feature that renders an iconic button next to each field that has an LOV. The LOV can also be invoked from the keyboard by pressing the List of Values access key (typically Ctrl+l).

The Keys window displays the keystrokes to achieve normal Oracle E-Business Suite operations, such as Next Block and Clear Record. This window can be viewed any time by pressing Ctrl+k.

Oracle E-Business Suite provides the profile option Forms Keyboard Mapping File to allow a customized keyboard mapping file to be used through the Professional User Interface. The keyboard mappings can be customized as follows:

Locate the Oracle Forms resource file on the middle tier, typically called fmrweb.res.

Note: This step is typically performed by a System Administrator.
Copy the file, rename it as appropriate, and locate it in the same directory as the original.
Open the new file in any text editor and make the desired keystroke mapping changes.

Tip: Comments at the top of the file explain how the mappings are performed.
To run this new mapping file, specify the complete path in addition to the filename in the profile Forms Keyboard Mapping File.

The Self Service Accessibility Features profile option determines the level of accessibility support in HTML-based applications.