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Using Accessibility Inspector

In Mac OS X v10.4 and later, Apple provides the Accessibility Inspector testing tool in /Developer/Applications/Utilities/Accessibility Tools. You can download the Developer Tools from the Apple Developer Connection website (developer.apple.com). Accessibility Inspector presents a utility window that displays the attributes (and values), actions, and position in the accessibility hierarchy of the object currently under the mouse pointer. To use Accessibility Inspector, be sure to enable assistive applications in the Universal Access Preferences.

If you’re beginning to access-enable your application, try using Accessibility Inspector to view the accessibility information other applications provide. Although Accessibility Inspector is not an assistive application, it uses the same APIs assistive applications use to get information from the accessibility objects it encounters.

You can focus Accessibility Inspector on a specific object to examine its attributes, perform its actions, and access its parent and children (if any), by pressing Command-F7. When you do this, the Accessibility Inspector display freezes, allowing you to move the mouse without changing the object on which the tool is focused. A second utility window then appears that displays information about the selected object. In this second window, you can go to the object’s parent, children, or other related objects, such as the containing window or the top-level accessibility object. You can also perform the actions supported by this accessibility object, allowing you to see how this affects the values of various attributes and the application itself.

As you access-enable your application, use Accessibility Inspector to make sure your objects contain the appropriate information. If you find that a specific object is not accessible, you can focus Accessibility Inspector on that object and examine its attribute values and perform its actions to find the problem.

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