Java Access Bridge and 64-bit Windows
The question of Does the Java Access Bridge work on 64-bit Windows? Recently came up on Sun’s Java Accessibility mailin list. After some discussion the following was posted by Peter Korn. It is reproduced here in hopes of being useful.
“I am writing to confirm to you that the existing 32-bit Java Access Bridge version 2.0.1 does work on 64-bit Vista, and I would expect it also would work with Windows 7. To use it with 64-bit Vista, you will need to do a “by hand” installation, as 64-bit Vista has introduced a pair of new directories for 32-bit files that the existing installer doesn’t know about. You must also use the 32-bit Java runtime (which means your Java applications & the runtime itself will be limited to 2GB of addressable memory). However, all of the other benefits of a 64-bit OS are available to you - e.g. for the other application you want to run.
Here are the steps:
- Download and install a 32-bit version of the Java runtime. This will work in 64-bit Windows, as do most 32-bit applications. Note that it will be installed not into your “Program Files” directory, but into 64-bit Vista’s “Program Files (x86)” directory.
Download the “Access Bridge 2.0.1 Manual Install (.zip)” - one of the two options you get after following the link “Download Java Access Bridge 2.0.1″ at http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/accessibility/accessbridge/ - Follow the “By hand” instructions at http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/accessibility/accessbridge/2.0.1/docs/setup.html
- Copy the three DLL files “JavaAccessBridge.DLL”, “JAWTAccessBridge.DLL”, and “WindowsAccessBridge.DLL” from the Access Bridge installerFiles directory into your new for 64-bit Vista Windows\SysWOW64 directory. This is where 64-bit Vista needs to have 32-bit DLLs (for most people the full path will be “C:\Windows\SysWOW65″).
- Modify your PATH so that it ends with the Windows\SysWOW64 directory (Start Menu-> Computer -> Properties -> Advanced system settings -> Environment Variables -> System Variables -> PATH to add the string “;%SystemRoot%\sysWow64″ to the end of the existing PATH (or at a minimum, that it appears after the entry for “”%SystemRoot%\system32″ in your path).
With those changes you should be able to run the JavaFerret and JavaMonkey test tools and see the accessibility information of accessible Java apps (like SwingSet2 which is what I tested with).
As to whether your specific AT will support Java in this fashion on 64-bit Vista - that is a question for the AT vendors. I have tested it with NVDA version 0.6p3.2 (latest released version as of today), and NVDA reads the contents of apps accessible Java apps just fine - just as it does on 32-bit Windows.”
Finally as of June 2009 it has been reported that JAWS 10.0 does not work with the above configuration. And NVDA is confirmed to be working.