Accessibility Support
- 3 minutes to read
Designing accessible Silverlight applications helps you broaden the potential audience and meet the guidelines of many institutions that require applications to be accessible.
Accessible applications frequently benefit all users, not just those with disabilities. Their functionality can easily be accessed by impaired people (who use assistive technologies, such as screen readers) and by people using monochrome displays or software that interprets web page content (shipped with mobile devices, for instance). Accessible design enables automation tools to search, index and work with the information within your applications.
The guidelines for creating accessible applications are published by various organizations, and provide common recommendations or detail legislative rules (as Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act in United States, see Section 508: Final Standards and Section 508: Guide to the Standards pages for more details).
#Support for Accessibility in Silverlight
Creating accessible applications requires understanding how Silverlight supports accessibility. See the following MSDN topics to learn more.
- Silverlight Accessibility Overview
- Accessibility Best Practices
- UI Automation Clients for Managed Code
#Support for Accessibility in DevExpress Silverlight Controls
Silverlight controls provided by DevExpress can help you create web applications that conform to accessibility guidelines. Though DevExpress controls might not meet accessibility standards out-of-the-box, they expose API (properties, methods, events) that you can use to make your applications accessible.
Generally, DevExpress Silverlight controls allow you to meet accessibility requirements in the following ways:
Keyboard Support
DevExpress Silverlight controls generally provide keyboard support out-of-the-box. For those operations that cannot be performed with a keyboard, our controls expose an extensive API that allows you to implement keyboard support for them in your application, for instance, by introducing specific shortcuts or adding auxiliary controls.
Screen Readers Support
Most of the controls shipped with DXperience provide comprehensive support for screen readers by exposing information about their visual elements through UIAutomation.
Easy Color Coding Duplication
DXperience controls allow you to easily duplicate information conveyed with color coding. For instance, in Chart Control, where colors are generally used to distinguish between different series, you can customize marker types, line patterns and series labels to make series distinguishable in case colors cannot be fully perceived by end-users.
Advanced Color Customization Dialogs
The ColorEdit control allows end-users to adjust interface colors by selecting from a variety of tones, so that they can easily produce the desired contrast level.
Clear Focus Indication
Controls shipped with DXperience provide clear visual focus indication. Focus is programmatically exposed for Assistive Technology by the Silverlight engine.
#Additional Web Resources
For more information on Section 508 and accessibility compliance, refer to the following document: