Java Swing, 2nd Edition

Classes Added in SDK 1.3 and 1.4

The 1.3 and 1.4 SDKs both augmented the Accessibility package. Three interfaces in particular stand out: AccessibleIcon, AccessibleEditableText, and AccessibleTable.

The AccessibleIcon Interface

Added in the 1.3 release, the AccessibleIcon interface allows assistive technologies to get information about any icons on a component (such as a button or a label). Notice that the getAccessibleIcon( ) method from the AccessibleContext class returns an array of icons. While Swing labels and buttons do not support multiple icons, custom components can freely do so and still provide useful information to assistive technologies.

Properties

Table 25-12 lists the three descriptive properties for AccessibleIcon. accessibleIcon -Description is the most useful property and can be set through the accessible context as it is on other components.

Table 25-12. AccessibleIcon properties

Property	Data type	get	is	set	Default value
accessibleIconDescription	String	·		·
accessibleIconHeight	int	·
accessibleIconWidth	int	·

The AccessibleEditableText Interface

While the AccessibleText interface has always been part of Swing, an editable representation for text did not exist. With the release of the 1.4 SDK, AccessibleEditableText fills that gap.

Property

As an extension of the AccessibleText interface, most of the properties for AccessibleEditableText are inherited. One writable property to alter the contents of the text component, textContents , was added. It is shown in Table 25-13.

Table 25-13. AccessibleEditableText ...