WD4A How Tos

Accessibility Rules

1. The top level of a page should be the ROOTUIELEMENTCONTAINER.
2. Each visible group of UI elements should be put in a Transparent Container. If the Transparent Container does NOT contain a Section Header, its "isLayoutContainer" must be set to TRUE. If instead a Section Header will be given to this group, it should be done as follows:
   1. Add a Section Header UI Element inside the Transparent Container. The Section Header's "Level" property should be set to "header4","header5", or "header6". Select the Transparent Container's property "LabeledBy" to be the ID of the Section Header. If a Transparent Container is labeled by a Section Header the property "isLayoutContainer" must be set to false.
3. All input fields must be given a "Label" and set the LabelFor property to the ID of the associated input.
4. All labels must be associated with a UI Element by setting the property "LabelFor."
5. Always create column headers for every visible column in a table.
6. All images that do NOT convey important information, such as horizontal rules, spacers, must have their "isDecorative" property set to True.
7. All images that DO convey important information must have short descriptive text in the ToolTip property.
8. Tooltips should never repeat Label text, they should only be used to add more information. See guidelines for alt text.
9. Never nest tables, for instance, never set a table popin's content to be another table.
10. Never nest trays, groups, or tabs, or other grouping containers, except Transparent Containers.
11. Periodically run the the automated "complete object" check as part of your development process to find and fix accessibility problems.
12. Melting Group pattern: use to remove input hints from the tab chain (see ZV_TEST, View V_CREATE_POS). ADD PICTURE.
13. Instead of using the PageHeader UI element, every page must have a page title made with a FormattedTextView, coded using the <h1> tag.
14. All Search Helps must be custom coded. The standard search help is neither accessible, nor usable, nor pretty.
15. The property "rowSelectable" of table UI elements should either have the value 'X' or it should be bound to the context. If you wish to ensure that the table cannot be selected or is to function merely as a display table, set the property "selectionMode" to the value "none" instead, which is preferred for usability reasons.
16. Screen changes: make all dynamic changes below the cursor, or move the cursor by changing the focused element, or announce that something has changed above the cursor.
17. Use the OTR to store all UI-related text.
18. Do not set actions to take a user off the page from a radio button or drop down elements without a go button.

Accessibility Rules - Explanations and Rationales

1. The root container acts as a transparent container and since it is the root container, does not need a label. Therefore adding a transparent container under the root container only adds another layer of html, but does not make the application more accessible.
2. This rule comes straight from the SAP Accessibility guidelines. The header4, header5 and header6 properties create semantic html, respectively <h2>,<h3> and <h4> tags.
3. This rule comes straight from the SAP Accessibility guidelines. By giving each input a label, people using assistive technology will hear the input's label as a description.
4. This rule allows SAP assistive code to associate a label with other UI elements or groups of elements.
5. Not sure what this rule does.
6. If an image does not have isDecorative set to true, WebDynpro will try to create an alt attribute that assistive technology will then read. Non informative images should not be announced with an alt tag.
7. The tooltip property is what WebDynpro code uses to create the various alt and title tag content for assistive technology to read.
8. If a tooltip repeats the label text, the code will be "read" twice by assistive technology and thereby annoy or confuse the user.
9. Nested tables confuse assistive technology because assistive technology trys to gather semantic information (labels of table cells) from tables.
10. Nesting grouping containers creates nested tables. See #9 for explanation of why this is bad.
11. This rule is self-explanatory.
12. This pattern essentially allows the developer to create two labels, one for a group of elements that includes an input, another for the input itself.
13. The pageHeader UI element SHOULD create an <h1> tag, which is the topmost header tag on a page. It does not. If subsequent versions of WebDynpro pageHeader UI elements do create <h1> tags, this rules should be changed.
14. This rule is self-explanatory.
15. In the SAP GUI, tables have select buttons in the left column. When rendered by Webdynpro, these "buttons" consistently confuse non SAP-GUI users. Therefore the preferred method of making a row selectable is to make one of the first two table cells contain data with a link. Clicking on that link would allow the user to do something with that row.
16. If the screen changes above the cursor, assistive technology may not "hear" the change and notify the user that a change occurred.
17. The OTR tables allow for translations and the ability of non-programmers with GUI access to change text.
18. The act of reading a drop-down "go menu" with assistive technology will fire the menu's Javascript and take the user away from the page before they have heard the other options (they will never be able to hear the other options).

Accessibility Known Exceptions - per SAP VPATS for ERP 6.0 Enhancement Pack 5, Netweaver 7.02

• Incorrect number of columns is announced by screen reader for UI Element RowRepeater that uses complex layout such as nested TransparentContainers.
• UI Element table: in some cases screen reader announces the row as selectable even though it cannot be selected.
• UI Element ToggleButton anounced only as ""Button"" by screen reader.
• For HorizontalContextualPanel UI Element, no level information is announced for the 2nd level row.
• For some semantic colors of TextView UI Element there is no speech output defined.
• The disabled state is not announced for a UI Toolbar element.
• InputField UI Element with F4 Help is announced as ""combo box"" instead of ""Edit"".
• For a number of UI Elements, the screen reader either repeats element information twice or makes a second announcement that differs from the first (correct) announcement when the UI Element gets the keyboard focus:
  a. Groups: Sometimes ""Table"" is announced additionally at the begin of a Group and ""cell"" at the end.
  b. Images: Screen reader announces ""Graphic"" additionally.
  c. Radiobutton-Groups: ""0 Items"" is announced additionally even if the group has items.
• The ""Browse"" Button of a FileUpload UI Element is not announced at all.
• In some rare cases, instead of announcing the attributes of UI Element actually focused, the attributes of the UI Element container or the preceding UI Element are announced.
• When navigating to the items of the UI Element ItemListBox with MultiSelection via down arrow key the items sometimes are also automatically selected.
• Navigation to the first empty/blank entry in the dropdown of an Dropdown UI Element is not possible with the keyboard.
• While navigating to a different Tab within UI Element Tab Strip, visible focus gets lost.
• No visual indication for selected top level menu item.
• If Windows runs in High Contrast theme sometimes the focus is not visible when using the Web Dynpro High Contrast theme.
• Focus is not restored on Row Selectors in certain cases for UI Element Table when a selection is made. Instead, other elements are focused (e.g a UI Element Button below the Table)."
• The following UI Elements are rated as not accessible:
  • Gantt
  • Network
  • BusinessGraphics
  • GeoMap

Unit Testing Procedures

1. Check tab chain (explain).
2. For JAWS to work in WD4A, Virtual PC cursor must be turned off.

Usability Rules

• Trays are strongly discouraged because they can confuse users. Programmatically hide elements instead.

1. For text fields that will always be read-only, developers should use TextView (not InputField-ReadOnly).
2. For text fields that will sometimes be editable but under other conditions read-only (e.g. HSA Details screen), developers would prefer to use InputField-ReadOnly.