8339728: [Accessibility,Windows,JAWS] Bug in the getKeyChar method of the AccessBridge class

[vieiro]

Backport of JDK-8339728 from 17u that solves some accessibility issues on Windows, for parity with 11.0.27/28-oracle (and because it's marked as CPU25-critical-SQE-OK too). Low risk.

The test does fail without this fix (when read-out, the short-cuts are truncated, so for instance the menu short-cut "Ctrl+Shift+Period" was read out as "Control plus Shift plus P", instead of "Control plus Shift plus Period".

The new accessibility test passes on Windows 10 (tested with JAWS v. 2025.2412.102 - February 2025 ).

Clean but for an update in copyright header and for a multi-line string (that has been replaced) in AccessBridge.java.

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Progress

• Change must be properly reviewed (1 review required, with at least 1 Reviewer)
• JDK-8339728 needs maintainer approval
• Change must not contain extraneous whitespace
• Commit message must refer to an issue

Issue

• JDK-8339728: [Accessibility,Windows,JAWS] Bug in the getKeyChar method of the AccessBridge class (Bug - P3 - Approved)

Reviewers

• Severin Gehwolf (@jerboaa - Reviewer)

Reviewing

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[bridgekeeper]

👋 Welcome back vieiro! A progress list of the required criteria for merging this PR into master will be added to the body of your pull request. There are additional pull request commands available for use with this pull request.

[openjdk]

@vieiro This change now passes all automated pre-integration checks.

After integration, the commit message for the final commit will be:

8339728: [Accessibility,Windows,JAWS] Bug in the getKeyChar method of the AccessBridge class

Reviewed-by: sgehwolf

You can use pull request commands such as /summary, /contributor and /issue to adjust it as needed.

At the time when this comment was updated there had been 5 new commits pushed to the master branch:

• 624cef6: 8351099: Bump update version of OpenJDK: 11.0.28
• 8785172: 8026976: ECParameters, Point does not match field size
• 289644a: 8346887: DrawFocusRect() may cause an assertion failure
• ea3a0e4: 8328957: Update PKCS11Test.java to not use hardcoded path
• 659a466: 8306408: Fix the format of several tables in building.md

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[openjdk]

This backport pull request has now been updated with issue from the original commit.

[mlbridge]

Webrevs

• 00: Full (ae1b64c4)

[vieiro]

This one was a multiline String constant in JDK17 and above.

[jerboaa]

@fthevenet Could you please help test/review this patch. Thank you!

[fthevenet]

@fthevenet Could you please help test/review this patch. Thank you!

Hmm... I can't seem to get JAWS to work with swing applications at all on my machine: it doesn't read anything from inside the JFrame (only the window title).
FWIW, it seems to work as expected with "native" applications or even javafx ones, but swing apps seems to be totally opaque to the screen reader software on my env.

This is I assume a configuration issue on my end, and has likely nothing to do with this change, as I've experienced the same with 11.0.26 and 23.0.2, but it means I unfortunately won't be able to test this until I get this working.

[jerboaa]

OK. Thanks!

[fthevenet]

Okay so today I learned that the accessibility bridge isn't enabled by default, and that you have to turn it on explicitly using jabswitch -enable[1]
With this turned on, I was finally able to test this change and I can confirm that the screen reader software would read out the shortcuts correctly with the change, while it would only reads the first letter of the last key when running it in 11.0.26.
As a side note, I ran this test with NVDA instead of JAWS, so it is good to see this works with a larger panel of accessibility solutions.

I'm tempted to say that adding a short mention to turning on the accessibility bridge in the comments that describe how to run the test would go a long way toward saving some time to people who, like me, aren't familiar with screen readers, but I'm not sure that this is something that belong into a backport. WDYT @jerboaa ?

[1] https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/11/access/enabling-and-testing-java-access-bridge.html

[vieiro]

I'm tempted to say that adding a short mention to turning on the accessibility bridge in the comments that describe how to run the test would go a long way to saving some time to people who, like me, aren't familiar with screen readers, but I'm not sure that this is something that belong into a backport. WDYT @jerboaa ?

Thanks for the review, @fthevenet ! Maybe updating the doc/testing.md is a good idea too?

[jerboaa]

WDYT @jerboaa ?

Yes, not something to introduce in this backport. Feel free to propose this simple change in https://github.com/openjdk/jdk, @fthevenet

[jerboaa]

Thanks for the review, @fthevenet ! Maybe updating the doc/testing.md is a good idea too?

It could be. Propose this for JDK head first, though. Thanks!

[jerboaa]

Clean but for an update in copyright header and for a multi-line string (that has been replaced) in AccessBridge.java.

Confirmed. Patch looks fine to me.

[openjdk]

⚠️ @vieiro This change is now ready for you to apply for maintainer approval. This can be done directly in each associated issue or by using the /approval command.

[vieiro]

/approval request Please approve this backport from JDK-17 that fixes an accessibility problem in Windows, where JMenuItem shortcuts were not properly read out. Low risk. Verified in Windows 10 with JAWS.

[openjdk]

@vieiro
8339728: The approval request has been created successfully.

[vieiro]

/integrate

[openjdk]

@vieiro
Your change (at version ae1b64c) is now ready to be sponsored by a Committer.

[jerboaa]

/sponsor

[openjdk]

Going to push as commit bf78d9b.
Since your change was applied there have been 5 commits pushed to the master branch:

• 624cef6: 8351099: Bump update version of OpenJDK: 11.0.28
• 8785172: 8026976: ECParameters, Point does not match field size
• 289644a: 8346887: DrawFocusRect() may cause an assertion failure
• ea3a0e4: 8328957: Update PKCS11Test.java to not use hardcoded path
• 659a466: 8306408: Fix the format of several tables in building.md

Your commit was automatically rebased without conflicts.

[openjdk]

@jerboaa @vieiro Pushed as commit bf78d9b.

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