ACCESSIBILITYFS: AN ALL-ACCESS PASS TO YOUR UI

By Dave MacLachlan, Google Mac Team

A hebdomad or so past I was hunting at doing whatever operator programme testing. At the despite the fact while, I was activity with MacFUSE, wondering close by things I could do with it. All of a startling I had an epiphany: I had to jot AccessibilityFS, an accessibility case system! Not well-grounded because it's gratuitously sedateness, but because it turns elsewhere much a affection has whatever bleeding useful applications. You crapper smoke it as far as something UI investigating, UI scripting, and up as a direction-stock VNC of sorts. Of headway, it's also a critical description of how to profit by MacFUSE, and it's from start to finish munificent sourced.

The Accessibility APIs are how an assistive profession, much as a movies reverend or mentality-chase pussyfoot, communicates with applications on Mac OS X. These APIs concession for you to check out an request's UI and use it in a mix of ways. AccessibilityFS creates a line structure that uses the availableness APIs to take under one's wing a directory representing your management applications. You crapper then inquire the a variety of UI elements--windows, menus, controls, and so on--as if they were folders and documents in your Finder. The attributes of the UI elements, much as continuance, establish, denominate, etc., are stored as long attributes on the files and folders. Shell commands much as xattr make include you visit with and, if workable, control these attributes. (Please state that to take a rest helper on xattr, you obligation reason xattr -h because Leopard is absent the human beings page.) You crapper coextensive with beam actions to the elements before "publication" actions much as AXPress to the files. Please catch sight of the AccessibilityFS wiki foot-boy representing solon info, or limitation unserviceable this recording of me demoing the AccessibilityFS at a new Cocoaheads meeting.

You crapper download the AccessibilityFS here. Its creator is in the MacFUSE svn repository. There's also a Google Group discussing AccessibilityFS and another MacFUSE topics. Have fun!