Accessibility (Screen Readers)
SftButton/OCX 4.0 includes built-in Windows UI Automation (UIA) support. Users who rely on Narrator, NVDA, JAWS or any other UIA-compatible assistive technology can read and operate the control without the hosting application doing any work. There is no opt-in and no code change required.
What the screen reader sees:
| Element | Exposed as |
|---|
| Control type | Button. The control advertises the Invoke pattern, so an assistive technology can activate it the same way a mouse click or the space bar would. |
| Name | The button's Text caption, with the & mnemonic marker removed. The mnemonic character itself is reported separately as the access key. |
| State | Enabled or disabled, whether the control has keyboard focus, and for a toggle button (Toggle) whether it is currently pressed. |
Event notifications are raised automatically when the button is invoked, when it gains or loses keyboard focus, and when its caption changes. The provider loads on demand the first time a UIA client queries the control, so there is no overhead for applications whose users never attach an assistive technology.
Two things the application controls:
- Give every button a meaningful Text caption. The caption is what the screen reader announces; a button that carries only an image has nothing to say. Where the design calls for an image-only button, set the caption anyway - it is not drawn when the button style shows images alone, but it is still reported to assistive technology.
- Include a mnemonic in the caption (for example &Save) so keyboard users can reach the button directly.
Dark mode and Windows High Contrast are independent accessibility settings. SftButton/OCX honors both automatically. See Dark Mode and High Contrast.
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