Support for desktop accessibility features

Enabling accessibility on Windows

Accessibility on Windows is provided via Java Access Bridge, which is disabled by default. To develop accessibility features on Windows, enable Java Access Bridge with the following command:

%JAVA_HOME%\bin\jabswitch.exe /enable

To create a native distribution that includes accessibility features, add the jdk.accessibility module using the modules DSL method:

compose.desktop {
    application {
        nativeDistributions {
            modules("jdk.accessibility")
        }
    }
}

Example: Custom button with semantic rules

Let's create a simple app with a custom button and specify explanatory text for screen reader tools. With a screen reader enabled, you will hear the "Click to increment value" text from the button description:

.clickable { count += 1 } .semantics(mergeDescendants = true)
 {...}

To test accessibility information for the elements in your application on macOS, you can use Accessibility Inspector (Xcode | Open Developer Tool | Accessibility Inspector):

On Windows, you can use the Show Speech History feature in JAWS or the Speech Viewer in NVDA:

For more examples, refer to the Accessibility in Jetpack Compose guide.

What's next?

Explore the tutorials about other desktop components.