Infocenter

Accessibility

Based on Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act, Host On-Demand offers new accessibility features in the Host On-Demand end-user client to help users who have physical disabilities, such as restricted mobility or limited vision. Features include keyboard equivalents for all actions (mouseless operation), support for display system settings for size, font, and color for user interface controls, enhanced color remapping, and descriptive text for selected graphics. Users who want to take advantage of accessibility features must have Java 1.4, which is a specific version of the Java 2 platform. These features are available on the Windows platform.

Administrators who need to deploy accessible Host On-Demand panels to end users should select Java 2 or Auto Detect as the Client Java Type in the Deployment Wizard on the Additional Options window.

Some assistive technologies, such as the JAWS screen reader, are installed in the system's Java Runtime Environment (JRE). Users who need this assistive technology to work with the Deployment Wizard should be aware that the Deployment Wizard uses the JRE installed with Host On-Demand, not the system's JRE. Administrators will need to copy certain files in the assistive technology's JRE into Host On-Demand's JRE in order to allow the assistive technology to work with the Deployment Wizard. Refer to the assistive technology's documentation for details about which files need to be modified.

Accessibility features include the following:

Support for system display settings (font, font size, and color)
Textual Operator Information Area (OIA)
Keyboard equivalents for GUI panel interaction
Numerical values for color remapping
Descriptive text for selected graphics
Name and description for all interface components


Support for system display settings (font, font size, and color)

Microsoft Windows operating systems provide the capability to configure system color, fonts, font sizes, and high contrast settings. Host On-Demand, including the logon panel, session properties panels, the Host On-Demand desktop, as well as client panels, inherits these settings by default. The host session's green screen, however, does not inherit these settings since it is controlled from within the Host On-Demand application. To change the settings on the host session green screen, use the session's Color Remap option and the font options on the Screen option of session properties.

You can change the system settings for color, fonts, font sizes, and high contrast of the Host On-Demand windows from the Control Panel on Windows operating systems. For example, to change high contrast settings using Windows 2000, open the Control Panel, double click the Accessibility Options icon, and open the Display tab. To change color, fonts, and font sizes, open the Control Panel, double click the Display icon, open the Appearance tab, and use the Item drop-down menu to change your system settings.

Host On-Demand inherits color, font, and font size settings from the following items:

3D Objects
Change the font and border colors of active windows, inactive windows, and message boxes.
Active Title Bar
Change the font type, font size, font color, font attributes, title bar size, and title bar colors of active title bars.
Active Window Border
Change the size and color of active windows borders.
Caption Buttons
Change the size of the minimize, restore, and close buttons on windows.
Inactive Title Bar
Change the font type, font size, font color, font attributes, title bar size, and title bar colors of inactive title bars.
Inactive Window Border
Change the size and color of inactive windows borders.
Menu
Change the menu bar color, menu bar size, font type, font color, font size, and font attributes of active windows.
Message Box
Change the font type, font color, font size, and font attributes of message boxes.
Scrollbar
Change the width of the scrollbar of active windows.
Selected Items
Change the size, color, font type, font size, font color, and font attributes of selected items.
ToolTip
Change the size, color, font type, font size, font color, and font attributes of hover text.
Window
Change the background and font color of active windows.

Textual Operator Information Area (OIA)

The OIA is the area at the bottom of the host session screen where session indicators and messages appear. Session indicators show information about the workstation, host system, and connectivity. For a list of session indicators, refer to Understanding the OIA in the Host On-Demand Troubleshooting Guide.

Since a screen reader cannot interpret the graphical symbols used on a session's OIA, Host On-Demand now offers you the option to display a textual OIA. The textual OIA interprets the graphical symbols and displays them as text that a screen reader can interpret and read. It is designed so that you can tab (using Ctrl+Tab) to the textual OIA field from the green screen without erasing the memory location of the cursor position. Shift+Tab returns focus from the textual OIA back to cursor position in the host session. For example, if you want to know your current cursor position on the green screen and diagnose possible problems with the session, you can simply tab to the textual OIA, and a screen reader will read the text that is located in the texual OIA field. Once you are ready to return to the green screen, you can simply press Shift+Tab to return to the session.

The textual OIA is a series of rows that contain strings of text. You can navigate in the textual OIA by using the up and down arrows on the keyboard. When you log on to a session, the initial rows of text describe the default values of the OIA fields for that session. As you perform actions on the screen and move the cursor, the textual OIA updates the sentences to describe the current activity on the screen. The textual OIA represents the current status of the OIA, not a running history of the OIA.

The textual OIA is located just below the graphical OIA on the session screen and can be enabled from the following three locations:

When users select to display the textual OIA in the View menu, the option remains selected even after users close and restart the session. Users can select to view both the graphical OIA and the texual OIA, either the textual OIA or the graphical OIA, or neither the graphical OIA nor the textual OIA.

In Virtual Terminal (VT) sessions, users can add sentences to the textual OIA. Since Host On-Demand has no control over what users add, screen readers may or may not be able to read the these sentences.

Keyboard equivalents for GUI panel interaction

On host session screens, you can use keys or key combinations to perform operations that you can perform using the mouse. Beginning with Host On-Demand Version 8, the following keyboard equivalents are available:

All Host On-Demand sessions

FTP session

For a more comprehensive list of Host On-Demand keyboard equivalents, refer to Default Keyboard Mapping.

The following table contains some common Windows keyboard equivalents supported by Host On-Demand.

Because keys and key combinations can be remapped using the Keyboard Remap function, shortcuts might be different than what is listed in the following table.

Function Keyboard equivalent
JumpNext Ctrl+J
Print Screen Ctrl+P
Exit Ctrl+Q
Cut Ctrl+X
Copy Ctrl+C
Paste Ctrl+V
Select All Ctrl+A
Send File to Host Ctrl+S
Receive File from Host Ctrl+R
Play Macro Ctrl+M
Run Applet Ctrl+U
Index Ctrl+H

Operating systems include standard shortcut keys as aids to accessibility. This documentation does not address operating system-specific accessibility features. Consult your operating system's documentation for more information about these features.

Numerical values for color remapping

Host On-Demand now provides a Custom Color window that provides a variety of color selections capable of producing a range of contrast levels. This window allows you to select custom colors based on their numerical values for hue/saturation/brightness values and red/green/blue values. For more information about the Custom Color window, refer to Custom Colors.

Descriptive text for selected graphics

Graphics and images that communicate meaningful information, such as links, headers, and banners, are available in text form for users who have impaired vision. Users simply position their mouse cursors over these graphics and images to display the descriptive text. For example, in this online help file, the InfoCenter graphic in the top right corner is coded with the descriptive text "InfoCenter."

Other graphics and images that simply enhance the interface do not provide text descriptions.

Netscape 6 does not display descriptive text when the mouse cursor is positioned over graphics. Use View > Page Info > Images to see descriptive (alternate) text.

Name and description for all interface components

Host On-Demand now offers names and descriptions for client graphical user interface (GUI) components, such as the status bar, dialog boxes, buttons, and text fields. These names and descriptions are not visible on the product GUI, but you can access them using assistive tools, such as a screen reader. Currently, the Database On-Demand and Administration clients do not provide names and descriptions for its GUI components.


 

Related topics

  • Remapping the keyboard
  • Default characters and functions
  • Thai shortcut keys
  • BIDI shortcut keys