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Accessibility in the Animate workspace

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The Adobe Animate (formerly Flash Professional) workspace is keyboard-accessible for users who may have difficulty using a mouse.

Complete, updated Help is on the web. The application did not detect an Internet connection. For a complete version of this topic, click the link below or search complete Animate Help.

The Adobe Animate \workspace is keyboard-accessible for users who may have difficulty using a mouse.

See the discussion of Animate workspace accessibility in Help on the web to learn about navigating the user interface without a mouse.

About accessibility support

Accessibility support in the authoring environment provides keyboard shortcuts for navigating and using interface controls, including panels, the Property inspector, dialog boxes, the Stage, and objects on the Stage, so that you can work with these interface elements without using the mouse.

Certain keyboard controls and authoring environment accessibility features are available only in Windows.

To customize the keyboard shortcuts for accessibility in the authoring environment, use the Workspace Accessibility Commands section of the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog box.

To hide all panels and the Property inspector, press F4. To display all panels and the Property inspector, press F4 again.

Select controls in a panel using keyboard shortcuts

To move the focus through the panel controls when a panel or the Property inspector has the current focus, use the Tab key. To activate a menu that has the current focus, use the Spacebar (that is, pressing Spacebar is equivalent to clicking the menu in the panel). Animate does not support moving from panel to panel with the Tab key.

When you use the keyboard shortcut for panel controls, focus is applied to a control and the control is activated using the following criteria:

To select a control in the panel with the Tab key, the panel with the current focus must be expanded. If the panel is collapsed, pressing Tab has no effect.
To display the Panel menu items when the Panel menu has the focus, press the Space bar.
You can move the focus to a panel control only if the control is active. If a control is dimmed (inactive), you cannot apply focus to the control.

Move the focus through the items in the Panel menu of a panel

To display the Panel menu items when the focus currently applied to the Panel menu, press the Spacebar.
To move through the items in the Panel menu, press Down Arrow.
To activate the currently selected Panel menu item, press Enter (Windows) or Return (Macintosh).

Move the focus through the controls in a panel

Press Tab when the focus is currently applied to the Panel menu. To move the focus through the controls in the panel, press Tab repeatedly.
To activate the currently selected menu in a panel , press Enter or Return.
To edit a numerical Hot Text value, type the number and press Enter or Return.

Navigate dialog box controls using keyboard shortcuts

To move through the controls in the dialog box, press Tab.
To move through the controls within one section of a dialog box, press Up Arrow and Down Arrow.
To activate the button (equivalent to clicking the button), when the focus is applied to a dialog box control button, press Enter.
To apply the current settings and close the dialog box (equivalent to clicking OK), when the focus is not applied to any dialog box control button, press Enter.
To close the dialog box without applying the changes (equivalent to clicking Cancel), press Escape.
To view the Help content for the dialog box (equivalent to clicking Help), when the focus is applied to the Help button, press Enter or Spacebar.

Select the Stage or objects on the Stage using keyboard shortcuts

Selecting the Stage with a keyboard shortcut is equivalent to clicking on the Stage.

After the Stage is selected, use the Tab key to navigate through all objects on all layers, one at a time. You can select instances (including graphic symbols, buttons, movie clips, bitmaps, videos, or sounds), groups, or boxes. You cannot select shapes (such as rectangles) unless those shapes are instances of symbols. You cannot select more than one object at a time using keyboard shortcuts.

To select objects on the Stage, use the following techniques:

To select an object on the Stage, with the Stage selected, press Tab.
To select the previous object when an object is currently selected, press Shift+Tab.
To select the first object that was created on the active frame in the active layer, press Tab. When the last object on the top layer is selected, press Tab to move to the next layer beneath it and select the first object there, and so on.
When the last object on the last layer is selected, press Tab to move to the next frame and select the first object on the top layer there.
Objects on layers that are hidden or locked cannot be selected with the Tab key.

If you are currently typing text in a box, you cannot select an object using the keyboard focus. You must first press the Escape key and then select an object.

Navigate tree structures using keyboard shortcuts

To navigate tree structures, the hierarchical displays of file structures in certain Animate panels, use keyboard shortcuts.

To expand a collapsed folder, select the folder and press Right Arrow.
To collapse an expanded folder, select the folder and press Left Arrow.
To move to the parent folder of an expanded folder, press Left Arrow.
To move to the child folder of an expanded folder, press Right Arrow.

Work with library items using keyboard shortcuts

To copy or paste a selected library item, press Control+X (Windows) or Command+X (Macintosh) to cut the item, or press Control+C (Windows) or Command+C (Macintosh) to copy the item.
To paste a cut or copied item, click the Stage or in another library to set the insertion point, and press Control+V (Windows) or Command+V (Macintosh) to paste in the center of the Stage; or press Control+Shift+V (Windows) or Command+Shift+V (Macintosh) to paste in place (in the same location as the original).

To cut, copy, and paste items, use the following techniques:
- Cut or copy one item or multiple items.
- Cut or copy an item from the Library panel and paste it onto the Stage or into another library, or paste a folder into another library.
- You cannot paste a shape from the Stage into the library.
- You cannot paste a library item into a common library, because common libraries cannot be modified. However, you can create a common library.
- When you paste a library item onto the Stage, the item is centered.
- If you paste a folder, each item in the folder is included.
- To paste a library item into a folder in the destination library, click the folder before pasting.
- You can paste a library item into a different location in the same library where it originated.
- If you attempt to paste a library item into a location containing another item by the same name, select whether to replace the existing item.