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When in the options dialog, there is no keyboard-only way to switch between the tabs such as general, editor, fonts and colors, etc. The tabbar should be able to receive focus and the user should be able to use the left/right arrows to switch between the tabs then tab into the exposed tab panel for that tab. This is a violation of section 508 1194.21(a).
When you first open the options window the focus is in the search field. If you press Esc then the focus moves to the options window and by using the left/right buttons you can navigate between the major tabs. Once the preferred major tab is selected then by pressing Tab you move to the say first secondary tab under the major one. Using the left/right buttons you can move between all the secondary tabs and when you reach the desired one by pressing tab you can move into the components of that tab.
When I hit escape after opening the options dialog, I am placed on a field called filter. if I then tab once I am on the general tab. Using the right/left arrows from there causes me to cycle through the subtabs under general not through the major tabs on the dialog.
(In reply to comment #2) > When I hit escape after opening the options dialog, I am placed on a field > called filter. if I then tab once I am on the general tab. > Using the right/left arrows from there causes me to cycle through the subtabs > under general not through the major tabs on the dialog. 1. there are no subtabs under General category. If you press Tab you move the focus to the components inside General category. 2. if a category with subtabs have the focus, e.g. Editor, and you press tab then the focus moves to the tabbed pane under that category. From there if you use the left/right buttons you move to the next subtabs in that tabbed pane. This is expected. On the other hand if you press Tab you move the focus to the components inside that tab. I cannot reproduce what you are describing in 7.3
I will agree that it appears like after hitting escape and using the arrow keys it is changing major tabs, but JAWS is not reading the tab names. When I then tab after using the right/left arrow, I do appear to be in the various tabbed panels. So the real issue at this point is that the major tabs are not labeled in a way that JAWS can pickup their names. Perhaps setting their accessibleName property would help.
Added accessible name and description to the top level category buttons: http://hg.netbeans.org/core-main/rev/10da7c304526. JAWS should pick this up now.
Integrated into 'main-golden', will be available in build *201305062300* on http://bits.netbeans.org/dev/nightly/ (upload may still be in progress) Changeset: http://hg.netbeans.org/main-golden/rev/10da7c304526 User: Theofanis Oikonomou <theofanis@netbeans.org> Log: #228175 - No keyboard-only way to switch between options dialog tabs