Detect if ChromeVox is enabled or not from a ChromeApp

[Sumanta Mishra]

Hi, I am working on a ChromeApp which loads interactives in iFrame. We need to implement Accessibility in those interactives. Interactives have their own audio. Requirement is to stop interactive audio when ScreenReaer is playing Alt text audio. We are using ChromeVox as Screen Reader. 

Is there a way by which we can detect if ChromeVox is enabled or not from within ChromeApp? I tried MessagePassing and Native Messaging to check if ChromeVox is dispatching any message or not. 

Regards,

Sumant

[Dominic Mazzoni]

If this is a Chrome OS app, you can use the accessibilityFeatures API and that will tell you if ChromeVox is running or not.

If this is a Chrome app for platforms other than Chrome OS and you're sure you only care about ChromeVox and not other assistive technology, you can use the management API to see if ChromeVox is running by checking for its ID.

If this is a web app, or if you want to support other assistive technology other than ChromeVox, then there isn't a way to determine if a screen reader or other similar tool is running. If you want to control what's spoken and not interrupt existing screen reader speech, you could use ARIA live regions, but I'm not aware of a solution for audio, sorry.

If you have more questions about ChromeVox in particular, you can use the chromevox-discuss group.

Hope that helps,

- Dominic

[David Tseng]