Accessible Event Watcher

  • Article

The Accessible Event Watcher (AccEvent) tool allows developers and testers to validate that the user interface (UI) elements of an application raise proper Active Accessibility events when the UI changes. Changes in the UI occur when a UI element is invoked, selected, or has a state change, or when the focus changes.

Using Accessible Event Watcher

When you launch AccEvent, the main window is displayed. The main AccEvent window displays the Active Accessibility events raised by all applications that are running on the desktop. The title bar display the release information. The main menu provides access to commonly used functionality provided by AccEvent.

Note that AccEvent has a graphical user interface only; there are no command line arguments for this tool.

Accessible Event Watcher Tasks

This section includes information about commonly used AccEvent tasks.

Filtering Active Accessibility events

To configure the Active Accessibility events and properties that are displayed in the AccEvent window, click the Options menu and select the Settings menu item. The AccEvent Settings dialog box is displayed. You can also use this dialog box to filter for events.

The AccEvent Settings window contains the following panes:

Objects

Select the objects that you want events raised from. Window is selected by default.

Events

Select the events that you want raside from each object. All events are displayed by default.

Event Information

Select the information you want displayed after each event's name in the main window.

Object Properties

Select the properties that you want displayed after each event in the main window. Name, Role, and State are selected by default.

Filtering

Select one of the radio buttons in the filtering section to filter the events raised by the specified Hwnd. The Don't filter radio button is selected by default.

  • Select the Exclude radio button to display only the events raised from objects other than the specified Hwnd.
  • Select the Include radio button and specify an Hwnd to display only events raised from that Hwnd.

Saving Active Accessibility events

To save events that have been raised to a text file, open the File menu and select the Save Events menu item. You can use the text file for troubleshooting information, importing the information into a database, or reviewing.