User Guide

Accessibility.isActive() 233
Accessibility class
Availability
Flash Player 6.
Description
The Accessibility class manages communication with screen readers. Screen readers are a type of
assistive technology for visually impaired users that provides an audio version of screen content.
The methods of the Accessibility class are static—that is, you don’t have to create an instance of
the class to use its methods.
To get and set accessible properties for a specific object, such as a button, movie clip, or text field,
use the
_accProps property. To determine whether the player is running in an environment that
supports accessibility aids, use
System.capabilities.hasAccessibility.
Method summary for the Accessibility class
Accessibility.isActive()
Availability
Flash Player 6.
Usage
Accessibility.isActive() : Boolean
Parameters
None.
Returns
A Boolean value: true if the Flash Player is communicating with an accessibility aid (usually a
screen reader);
false otherwise.
Description
Method; indicates whether an accessibility aid is currently active and the player is communicating
with it. Use this method when you want your application to behave differently in the presence of
a screen reader or other accessibility aid.
Note: If you call this method within one or two seconds of the first appearance of the Flash window in
which your document is playing, you might get a return value of
false even if there is an active
Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) client. This is because of an asynchronous communication
mechanism between Flash and MSAA clients. You can work around this limitation by ensuring a
delay of one to two seconds after loading your document before calling this method.
Method Description
Accessibility.isActive()
Indicates whether a screen reader program is active.
Accessibility.updateProperties()
Updates the description of objects on the screen for screen
readers.
CHAPTER 6
ActionScript Core Classes