[SOLVED] How do I make Vista's Narrator read my Swing components back to me?

How do I make Vista's Narrator read my Swing components back to me?

I'm trying to implement a very, very simple accessibility test for Swing so I can get a handle on how big a piece of work it will be to provide accessibility support for our already established Swing application.

I have the most simple Swing program, and I'm using Narrator in Windows Vista to attempt to screen-read its GUI.

public class ReadableFrame extends JFrame {

     private ReadableFrame() {
         super();

         setTitle( "Banjollity's Window" );
         setSize( 640, 580 );
         setDefaultCloseOperation( WindowConstants.EXIT_ON_CLOSE );

         JButton button = new JButton( "Hello World" );

         getContentPane().setLayout( new FlowLayout() );
         getContentPane().add( button );

         setVisible( true );
     }

    /**
     * @param args
     */
    public static void main( String[] args ) {
        new ReadableFrame();
    }
}

Narrator can read the title but nothing else. I get "Banjollity's Window, contains no other known controls". If I replace the Swing JButton with an AWT Button like so:

Button button = new Button( "Hello World" );

...then it works properly, and I get "Banjollity's Window, focus on Hello World button, contains Hello World button".

I've tried installing the Java Access Bridge to JRE/lib/ext (and I strongly suspect this is working properly as my program refused to start up my application until I put the DLLs in Windows/System32) but to no avail.

Can anybody help, or share a few suggestions?

Solution

You don't, Narator is a bad screen reader. You need to install the java access bridge, and then use either jaws that will run for 40 minutes at a time as a demo or NVDA which is a free screen reader that also supports Java.