Question

I have a toolbar with a button and an NSView with a titled box. When the window opens and Voice Over is on, I want the focus to be on the titled box. Currently it’s on the toolbar button, because it’s probably higher in accessibility hierarchy. What should I do to have a focus on the box, instead on button?

Thanks

Answer 1

The solution was to access the window accessibility hierarchy in windowDidLoad like this:

id windowElement =  NSAccessibilityUnignoredDescendant(self.window);
NSArray *windowElements = [windowElement accessibilityAttributeValue:NSAccessibilityChildrenAttribute];

After that the element that is supposed to be first in hierarchy should be found in windowElements array. Say we found it and its index is firstElIndex then:

    NSMutableArray *mutArray = [NSMutableArray arrayWithArray:windowElements];
        id firstElement = [[mutArray objectAtIndex:firstElIndex] retain];

        [mutArray removeObject:firstElement];
        [mutArray insertObject:firstElement atIndex:0];

        [windowElement accessibilitySetOverrideValue:mutArray forAttribute:NSAccessibilityChildrenAttribute];
        [windowElement accessibilitySetOverrideValue:mutArray forAttribute:NSAccessibilityVisibleChildrenAttribute];
        [windowElement accessibilitySetOverrideValue:mutArray forAttribute:NSAccessibilitySelectedChildrenAttribute];
        [firstElement release];

Finally we override windowElement children attribute with new array, where the element we want the focus to be on will be at the first place.

This is the example for a very simple case. But this is the way to go.