MACROMEDIA FLASH 8-USING FLASH Use Manual page 532

Using ActionScript to create a tab order for
accessible objects
In addition to assigning a tab index to objects with the Accessibility panel (see
order index for keyboard navigation in the Accessibility panel (Flash Professional only)"
on page 526), you can create the tab order with ActionScript by assigning the
property to the following objects:
Dynamic text
Input text
Buttons
Movie clips, including compiled movie clips
Timeline frames
Screens
If you create a tab order for a frame and you don't specify a tab order for an accessible object in
the frame, Flash Player ignores all the custom tab order assignments. You should, therefore,
provide a complete tab order for all accessible objects. Additionally, all objects assigned to a
tab order, except frames, must have an instance name specified in the Instance Name text box
of the Property inspector. Even items that are not tab stops, such as text, need to be included
in the tab order if they are to be read in that order.
Because static text cannot be assigned an instance name, it cannot be included in the list of
the property values. As a result, a single instance of static text anywhere in the SWF
tabIndex
file causes the reading order to revert to the default.
To specify a tab order, you assign an order number to the
following example:
_this.myOption1.btn.tabIndex = 1
_this.myOption2.txt.tabIndex = 2
See in the
tabIndex
ActionScript 2.0 Language Reference.
You can also use
tabChildren()
MovieClip.tabChildren
ActionScript 2.0 Language Reference.
532 Creating Accessible Content
, , and
Button MovieClip
or
tabEnabled()
,
MovieClip.tabEnabled
property, as shown in the
tabIndex
in the
TextField
methods to assign custom tab order. See
, and
TextField.tabEnabled
"Creating a tab
tabIndex
in