Accessibility in TextBox in Windows Form - Visual Studio

Question

I'm new to visual studio and I'm developing an application for visually impaired. I'm testing my application with NVDA. The audio feedback I'm getting on moving focus to a TextBox using tab button is just "Edit-Blank". I want to change that to a custom text. How can I do that?

Answer 1

That has nothing to do with accessibility, actually. When developing for accessibility, please always keep in mind the following: a blind (deaf, ...) user must get the same info as all of your users, starting from yourself, unless you absolutely need to convey something that is inaccessible otherwise (a visual tooltip instead of a sound for deaf users, an alternative text description of an image for blind users, etc.).
Here NVDA tells you what you actually get: the edit box is blank, indeed. If you want to describe the box, you need a label, not something in the text box (let the user enter his/her text in it). So:

private Label myLabel;
// ...
this.myLabel = new Label();
// ...
this.myLabel.Text = "Your Name:";

and place that label to the left (or above) the edit box. You may also set AccessibleRole, if you want:

this.myLabel.AccessibleRole = AccessibleRole.StaticText;

I suggest to do this if your form is actually a dialog box.

Answer 2

You need to put a Label control into the form and update the TabIndex properties of the Label and TextBox, so that the Label's TabIndex value is one less than the TextBox's TabIndex value (e.g. label1.TabIndex == 1 and textBox1.TabIndex == 2).
Then, the Text of the Label will be read when entering the TextBox.

Answer 3

To make a TextBox more accessible by NVDA you can perform either of the following settings:

• You can set AccessibleName
• You can set AccessibleDescription
• You can put a Label control near the TextBox having immediate TabIndex before the TextBox.

For Narrator you can perform either of the following settings:

• You can set AccessibleName
• You can set Cue Banner for the TextBox.
• You can put a Label control near the TextBox having immediate TabIndex before the TextBox.