Many of the pages in Oracle Application Express are form pages designed for maintaining application metadata. This section describes how you can gain an understanding of the structure of these pages and interact with them using a screen reader such as JAWS.
Many form pages are logically broken up into different regions. For example, the Edit Page Item page has the following regions containing form fields for maintaining information about the page item:
Name
Displayed
Label
Settings
List of Values (depending on item type)
Element
Source
Default
Quick Picks (depending on item type)
Conditions
Read Only
Security
Configuration
Help Text
Comments
Oracle Application Express uses Heading (Hn) tags throughout its development interface to define page structure. For example, the Edit Page Item page contains one H1 heading with text pertaining to the current item name, and then H2 headings for all other discrete page sections, including all the item attribute groupings listed above. Please use standard screen reader heading navigation to navigation such pages.
Most items within the Application Express development environment have field-level help defined. To activate field-level help, focus on the item for which you need help and press the keyboard shortcut ALT+F1. Pressing this keyboard shortcut displays a popup window containing the help text.
Oracle Application Express provides many in-built features that help a JAWS user deal validation errors on form pages.
If a validation has failed on a form page when using Screen Reader mode, the page title is prefixed with the following:
x errors have occurred - [page title]
When a page loads, JAWS announces the page title. This means a JAWS user immediately knows a validation has failed.
Tip:
This behavior is also available by default for custom database applications that provision Screen Reader mode. See "Understanding Screen Reader Mode."To navigate to the section of the page where the error messages display, locate the H2 (Heading Level 2) tag with the text Notification Message included at the top of this section. This heading is hidden visually, but is available to screen reader users.
You can easily add a validation notification to your own database applications. To accomplish this, add the substitution string #NOTIFICATION_MESSAGE_HEADING# in the Page Template, Subtemplate, Notification section of a page template. This placeholder substitutes the contents of the built-in system message APEX.NOTIFICATION_MESSAGE_HEADING to the text Notification Message.
To customize this displayed text, define a text message with that name APEX.NOTIFICATION_MESSAGE_HEADING in your own application, along with the text you want to use.
For example, you could add the following to the Notification section of your page template:
<h2 class="hideMeButHearMe">#NOTIFICATION_MESSAGE_HEADING#</h2>
In this example, the use of the hideMeButHearMe CSS class hides content visually, but is available to screen reader users.
For validations that are associated with a particular page item, Oracle Application Express renders a Go to error link in the Notification section next to the corresponding error message. When a user clicks (or activates) the Go to error link, the focus shifts to the associated item. This enables all users (not just screen reader users) to go straight to the page item related to the error.
You can alter the Go to Error text to change the default text or to translate it into a language that is not translated by default with Oracle Application Express. In either case, define a text message called APEX.GO_TO_ERROR with the text and language of your choice. Additionally, you can disable this functionality and remove the Go to Error link by setting the text of the APEX.GO_TO_ERROR text message to just a single space.
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When running in Screen Reader mode, Oracle Application Express includes some Web Accessibility Initiative - Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) markup to invalid page items. This enhancement improves the screen reader user experience for screen reader and browser combinations that support WAI-ARIA.
When an error occurs relating to a specific page item, that page item is given the following additional attributes:
aria-invalid="true"
This means a screen reader announces "Invalid Entry"when the screen reader user is focused on the page item.
aria-describedby="[page_item_name]_error"
This attribute value matches up with the item's associated error messages so when the screen reader user focuses on the page item, the screen reader announces the actual error.
Before this enhancement, if a screen reader user navigated to a page item that had an error, the screen reader might announce, "Job, Edit, Type of Text." Now the screen reader would announce, "Job Edit, Invalid Entry, Job must have some value, Type of Text."
Tip:
If you are a plug-in item developer and want to provide the same WAI-ARIA support in your own plug-in, please see theAPEX_ERROR.GET_ARIA_ERROR_ATTRIBUTES function in Oracle Application Express API Reference.