I would like to use AutoHotKey to bring an access database to the screen, then take focus on one form (the form is open, but there will always be multiple other forms open at the same time, additionally, the form in question could be stacked at the bottom) and then the rest can be done with custom shortcuts that only work in this form.
I am also open for other solutions to do the same job, mouse clicks is also a possibility but forms are not always in the same place on different computers and they can also be moved during a session.
This is what I have been testing so far:
Bring up the database with IfWinExist, [title of window]
Then I tried using ControlFocus, [ControllerName]
That did work, but the controllername changes depending on what other forms are open and in which order they where last clicked on.
I have made a screenshot:
Any help would be nice, my main problem is that I do not know what AHK can do and therefore I feel very limited.
In the place of WinTitle you can also use other parameters of the window, not only WinTitle. More about it here: http://ahkscript.org/docs/misc/WinTitle.htm
Also you can use ImageSearch to get coordinates of the window and use these coordinates to move window without WinMove like here: http://ahkscript.org/boards/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4013
Related
I am trying to select a dynamic calendar on a website. My goal is to open the calendar and input dates as I need to. I am not able to open the calendar by "Press button on web page" or "Click link on web page" with my selected UI Element. There are no ID's available to select. I have tried using the div class names with no luck. I have tried altering the selector to make a custom selector that looks for div names containing part of the class name. The 'Name' attribute in Power Automate is unavailable for the UI Element.
After trying all this, I noticed an Icon that is part of a div for the calendar, has
aria-hidden="true"'. When I checked the MDN here it has a warning statement: "Warning: Do not use aria-hidden="true" on focusable elements."
With being unable to select the calendar with standard and custom selectors, am I being blocked by the accessibility setting? Is Power Automate unable to focus on the calendar opener from aria-hidden="true"?
I don't know power automate, but what you observe makes sense. The attribute aria-hidden=true tells assistive tools such as screen readers and voice control software to ignore the element, as if it wasn't present at all.
A focusable element must never be aria-hidden=true. A screen reader won't know what to say when landing on it, and, as observed, it won't be reachable using voice control.
That's simply a pure accessibility fail (I would even call it stupidity, but well).
Technically, the solution is very simple: remove that stupid offending aria-hidden=true. Those who made that calendar probably put it there because:
they thought that screen reader and voice control users will always enter a date by hand and won't ever use the date picker
the date picker hasn't been made accessible, and so it's better to ignore it completely rather to present something only partially accessible
They copy/paste the code from elsewhere and didn't pay attention
They have no excuse for the third one, and for the two first, both reasoning are just wrong. Even if it isn't perfect, it's better to have a little something rather than nothing.
Keyboard-only user or screen reader user don't necessarily mean eased to enter a date manually. ON a mobile, the virtual keyboard is often painful to use, and people with limited movement sometimes use a device with only a few available keys (such as enter, tab, escape, and arrow keys only). Additionally, both might be combined if you think about someone who has a strong dyslexia and an inability to use his hands (the device would be actioned with feet, blinking eyes, etc.).
In theory, you shouldn't ever use custom widgets if you can avoid it. For entering dates, the standard exists: input type=date and friends.
Using standard widgets is the best guaranty to have something accessible at long term. Even if it might not be 100% accessible right now, it's getting better as the time passes.
Sadly, UX designers often don't like standard widgets much because it doesn't look like what they want, and there are still a few older browsers which don't support them all very well.
We have a web-based app which uses a side-by-side experience for desktop users where the left side of the screen is a file browser and editor and the right side of the screen is an interactive preview. Users of our app will make constant and iterative changes on the left and and then interact with the preview on the right, switching back and forth many times in quick succession.
Is there a "best practice" for allowing quick and easy navigation between these two interactive areas? I know this might fall under the "opinion" category, but I feel that accessibility is such an overlooked topic that it helps to have as many resources as possible.
You have a few tools at your disposal.
Headings
Headings are one of the easiest ways to bake in some super simple section switching. Screen reader users will use the keys 1 through 6 to navigate by heading levels so if both of your panels are <h2>s (for example) they can simply cycle location using headings.
Keyboard shortcut keys
You can set keyboard shortcut keys.
However you should never do this in isolation. By this I mean if you say that switching window is say Alt + 0 you must allow users to be able to change these key bindings to their preferences.
This is so your shortcut keys don't interfere with their screen reader keys (as they may have set custom keyboard shortcuts).
please note: as pointed out in the comments this is not a WCAG requirement for key combinations (which is only for single keys) but is a usability best practice and highly encouraged, especially as some screen reader users use a modifier key rather than a toggle key for screen reader navigation.
Then we get into an interesting area which I like to illustrate by saying "how would a one handed user use your page?".
This example makes you realise that some sort of sticky keys solution may also be considered where key combinations can be done with a sequence of keys, any time apart (as you may have someone with NO HANDS using eye gaze technology or a switch for example so you don't want to impose a time limit.)
Obviously the above are extreme examples but things you may want to consider (and in reality anyone using eye gaze would be able to visually switch panels etc.)
Voice commands
Being able to switch panels via voice (for example Dragon Naturally Speaking) is also essential.
Now you can do key combinations with voice software so that fixes most issues but they can be annoying and fiddly.
One thing that is quick to use on most voice software is clicking any button on a page with a unique name.
As such having a button above each panel that activates it would be beneficial to voice users.
Assuming these buttons have unique names I could simply say "click activate panel 2" (where "activate panel 2" is the button name) and switch immediately.
Do you need to manage focus?
Bear in mind that when you switch panels you will by default start at the top each time.
This may be exactly what you want but more than likely this would be a terrible user experience.
Instead you may want to remember the previous focus location. Then if I use the keyboard shortcut it would jump back to the same location in the panel. If I use the voice / button click to change location same again.
However if someone uses headings to navigate this obviously wouldn't work. You could then give them a button directly after the heading that says "resume from previous location" to fix this and use that to manage focus.
User settings
As you can see there are loads of things that different people with different requirements may or may not need.
As such adding all of the features by default would probably make the application worse to use for majority of users.
Instead have a settings screen that lets a user turn on features that benefit them, set their own shortcut keys, turn on or off sticky keys, decide if they want you to manage focus for them (or not) etc.
This is a difficult problem! I have been giving a similar issue a lot of thought. I have outlined one idea that uses ARIA live regions, and an alternative idea that might work better if quick-jump keyboard support is vital.
Live region announcements as part of a <form>
The <output> tag may be what you're looking for. It is mapped to the ARIA role of status so any changes to its content will be announced without any focus change. That way, the user can continue to navigate and make changes on the left side without always having to flip over to the right side to know what changes were made.
The role status has an implicit aria-live value of "polite", so that the announcement will wait until any other descriptive announcement is finished.
It has an implicit aria-atomic value of "true", which means that any change will trigger the announcement of the entire contents of the element -- which may or may not be appropriate for the content. If not, add aria-atomic="false" to read out only the changed node.
If the content inside the <output> could be anything other than phrasing content (including <div>s or heading tags) then you should use a <div> with the role attribute of "status" instead.
Custom keyboard controls can get tricky with various types of assistive technology (AT) software/hardware. Plus those commands probably can't be made easily discoverable. Some ATs provide a keyboard command to flip between a controlling element and the element assigned via its aria-controls attribute. Unfortunately, this functionality is poorly supported, but it is the current standard, so support may get better over time. Currently only NVDA on Windows supports it, with the keyboard command Insert + Alt + M.
Adding aria-controls to an element controlling an <output>/status is mandatory anyway, so give it a unique id attribute and set that as the value of aria-controls on each form element inside the <form>.
If the <output>/status is wrapped in a <fieldset> and the inputs are all wrapped in a containing <fieldset>, then each <fieldset> acts as a grouping container, so the user can navigate between them quickly. As part of this, ensure the <fieldset> containing the <output> directly follows <fieldset> containing the form elements in the source order. If this isn't possible, add the aria-owns attribute to the containing <form> and reference the id attributes of both <fieldset>s with a space in between.
Always-open non-modal <dialog>
You may instead consider making the right side pane an always-open non-modal <dialog>. A <button> next to each interactive element on the left pane would move focus to the <dialog>, and the Escape key would return focus back to the <button>. Focus isn't trapped within a non-modal <dialog>, so the user can still move between each pane using normal navigation methods. The <dialog> needs to have an open attribute to appear and it also needs to have aria-modal="false".
Each <button> would need an aria-controls value referencing the <dialog>'s id attribute, and an aria-haspopup value of "dialog". The <button>s could be invisible until focused.
There's only a single focused point at any given time. So there isn't any real miracle solution, screen reader and other keyboard-only users will necessarily have to repeatedly go back and forth.
IN fact, the most important isn't to be able to switch quickly between the different parts (you must only somehow give a way to do it only with keyboard), but to not lose cursor position when you switch.
For example if I edit something on the left, go to the right to check the result, and then go back to the left side, I expect to find the insertion point exactly where I left it off.
You really have to make sure that this is always correct, and as closest as possible when changes occurs (especially when it's asynchronous, i.e. a change occurs on the right side when you are on the left side).
The most similar accessibility recipe or component is probably split view.
In windows world, the most used shortcuts for cycling between the different splitte parts is F6, and Shift+F6 to cycle in reverse direction.
Don't hesitate to add other easier or additional shortcuts if the switch has to be really frequent, such as Ctrl+Tab, if such shortcuts aren't already used for something else.
F6 and Shift+F6 aren't the easiest shortcuts to perform, especially on laptops where all F1-12 keys may not be available at all or only by using an additional FN key. I personally always found F6 a questionnable choice, but that's only an opinion; at least we have something and that's of course better than nothing.
However, don't replace an existing shortcut commonly used. (for example Ctrl+Tab = switch between different tabs, don't use it for cycling between views if there are tabs in your application and keep it for the tabs)
I am trying to code an app in Qt for capturing and then sharing the screenshots. For now my application captures the screenshot, shows a preview and saves it. I am yet to do the upload part. but before that I would like to be able to select the area of the screen of which the screenshot needs to be captured.
I tried searching and I couldn't find any helpful articles or documents in Qt. So can anyone help me?
PS: The idea is to create a similar app like lightshot and several other similar tools.
Thanks in advance
There are two methods that you can use for this: -
1) Capture an image of the screen and then display that, full screen to the user, essentially allowing the user to crop the image.
2) A more commonly used method is to create a full-screen, topmost window that has no title bar and is transparent. This allows the user to drag out an area, which you can draw an outline to represent the area the user requires.
I recommend the 2nd method and creating a transparent window is simply a matter of changing the window flags, as you can see here.
How do I switch between the two screens on the Qt?
For example, I have a button - static text plus a toolbar. Now I will add it to a frame and set it as a central widget. It works well for one window. What if I move it to the next window? Then I need to show some other stuff like another button, some images etc... and what if I come back to the first view again?
How do I show my old widgets back?
I'm not sure I got your problem right but, you could have different scenarios :
You could simply use groupboxes... Some widgets in groupbox1, otherWidget in groupbox2, and you display the groupbox you want to use, hiding the others...
You could use stackedWidget, which simulates "pages" of widgets stacked on top of eachothers... more informations here : http://qt.nokia.com/doc/4.6/qstackedwidget.html.
You could use other way like using tabs : http://doc.trolltech.com/4.6/qtabwidget.html
Maybe this example would be useful to you : http://qt.nokia.com/doc/4.6/dialogs-configdialog.html
Hope it helps a bit !
I'd recommend checking out Animation/States example (should be in /qt/examples/animation/states/ subdirectory of your Qt installation). It shows how to combine state machine representing application logic with presentation layer and get cool animation effects for free (of course if you don't need eye candy, you can set widgets properties without any animation).
I am developing an ASP.NET application for an online quiz test. The set of questions would be randomly selected from a pool of questions. The application works fine, but I want to hide the browser menu option (so that user cannot save or print the test) when the quiz page is shown. I do not want to open a new popup window. So how do I do this for the active window.
The application consists of around 5 web pages, and the test is on pages 3 and 4. So I want the menu to be hidden only on pages 3 and 4. Is this possible and how do I do this?
Thanks in advance
This isn't possible. You can only hide the menu bar in a popup window.
Either way, though, the user can always right-click and select Print, or use a shortcut like Ctrl + P. And even if you could hide the menu, they could just disable JavaScript. If they really want to print/save the quiz, you won't stop them. I suggest finding another workaround.
I don't think it is possible to do what you are asking.
And remember that there are other ways to print than using the menu of the browser : Ctrl+P generally does that , it's also possible to "save the page" from the right-click menu or using Ctrl+S -- and, of course, there is always print-screen ;-)
The best "protection" you can probably have is defining a correct license (which means you might need a lawyer, to get something solid), that explicitly forbids re-distribution of questions : this way, your users can re-use the questions for them -- you cannot prevent that, anyway -- but can't re-distribute them.
Of course, this is probably only worth it if you are developping some quizz with questions that you are going to sell.
Once the page is rendered to the screen the ultimate control goes to the user. He can turn off javascript and do the necessary job or he can capture the page and so many ways.
Better not to try doing this.
As long as the data is in the user's computer he may access it in one way or another, and i'm not sure its worth the hassle.
If you want to deny printing, you may try using some special CSS media types (like definning some styles with display:none or color:#fff).
http://www.w3schools.com/CSS/css_mediatypes.asp
But even like this the user might simply press PrntScr :)
You may also intercept ctrl+P keystrokes, by using an onKeyDown event on the whole HTML body and stop the bubling, but it may not work the same cross-browser.
You may also deny right-clicking on the page by handling the onContextMenu event ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms536914%28VS.85%29.aspx )
Also, the questions should be rendered as images, or deny selecting text from the page so the user wont be able to copy/paste the questions in an email (http://www.dhtmlcentral.com/forums//archive/index.php/t-18008.html mmight help)