Question

I am developing a WPF application that must meet Section 508 (Accessibility) requirements. In general we have the app working with the narrator, but are having issues with the ListView controls where the items are not being announced.

How does one get the ListView items that are populated through data binding at run-time available to the narrator?

I have done much searching on this topic to no avail. Any articles and code samples on this would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

There is no way to make WPF more accessible for narrator that I know of. This isn’t a big issue though as almost no one who has to use a Windows screen reader for computer access uses narrator. Narrator is an extremely poor screen reader and there are much better alternatives available. If you have Windows 7 and want to try to test without buying a screen reader you can try testing your application with NVDA This is an open source fairly high quality screen reader. According to This bug report WPF accessibility is flakey. This appears to be to do poor UIA support in XP, if you want to test accessibility you should use Windows 7. If you are serious about 508 compliance and accessibility you should test with Jaws Jaws costs anywhere from $895 to $1095 and the license specifically forbids using the demo for accessibility testing. In spite of this cost if 508 compliance matters you need to buy the program and test with it. Jaws is the standard screen reader used in business and government settings.