Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) is a technology that lets applications provide information about their user interface to other software, for example, screen readers.
Information about the application’s UI elements is exposed via the special IAccessible
interface. This interface provides information about the type of the underlying control, its name, location and current state, and provides methods for manipulating that control.
This way, active accessibility information can be used for functional (or user interface) testing.
TestComplete can recognize UI elements in applications by using their active accessibility information. You can use it to –
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Expose information about custom controls in applications.
Many applications use custom or owner-drawn controls, which do not behave like standard Windows controls, and thus TestComplete may not recognize them. Examples of such applications are those created with Microsoft FoxPro, Sybase PowerBuilder and other development tools.
Development tools can automatically include accessibility information in applications or you can implement accessibility information in the application manually.
TestComplete will use the accessibility information to access and interact with objects in such applications.
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Test applications for accessibility.
You can test whether the objects in your tested application have correct accessible names and roles specified, whether the control default actions are executed correctly, and so on.
Note: | You can get the latest version of the Active Accessibility from Microsoft Download Center – Platform SDK: Microsoft Active Accessibility 2.0 Redistributable |
This section provides information on how to use the MSAA engine to recognize objects in tested applications.
In This Section
About Using Microsoft Active Accessibility
Addressing Objects in MSAA Open Applications
MSAA Object Types by Accessibility Roles
Implementing MSAA Support Manually
Limiting the Number of MSAA Child Objects
Related Topics of Interest
Properties Added to MSAA Objects
Project Properties - MSAA Options
Testing Flash and Flex Applications via the MSAA Engine
Testing PowerBuilder Applications
Testing Microsoft Access Applications
Testing Microsoft InfoPath Forms
See Also
Object Identification
Working With Application Objects and Controls
About Open Applications