Accessibilty and JPopupMenu

Question

I am using JAWS 6 with JDK 1.4.2_06 and Access Bridge 1.2.
If I add Menuitems to a JMenu which is added to the menubar everything works as expected. One of the menu items is another JMenu, a sub-menu. When JAWS reads this it speaks "submenu" indicating that there is a sub-menu to the right of the current menu item. However, If I attached the exact same menuitems to a JPopupMenu,
JAWS never speaks "submenu" so the user has no iindication that there is a sub-menu to the right.
I've taken the attached code from "The JFC Swing Tutorial - Second Edition" and tweaked it slightly so the menubar and popup menu contain the same items.
It seems as if the accessibility api is expecting the first set of menu items to be attached to a menu parent.
If worked around this for now by adding another top level menu to the popupmenu to which I add the menuitems.
Is this a Java or JAWS bug ?
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import javax.swing.*;
* Like MenuDemo, but with popup menus added.
public class TextFieldDemo {
JTextArea output;
JScrollPane scrollPane;
String newline = "\n";
public JMenuBar createMenuBar() {
JMenuBar menuBar;
JMenu menu;
//Create the menu bar.
menuBar = new JMenuBar();
//Build the first menu.
menu = new JMenu("A Menu");
menu.setMnemonic(KeyEvent.VK_A);
menu.getAccessibleContext().setAccessibleDescription(
"The only menu in this program that has menu items");
JMenuItem[] mi = createAMenu();
for(int i=0; i < mi.length; ++i)
menu.add(mi);
menuBar.add(menu);
//Build second menu in the menu bar.
menu = new JMenu("Another Menu");
menu.setMnemonic(KeyEvent.VK_N);
menu.getAccessibleContext().setAccessibleDescription(
"This menu does nothing");
menuBar.add(menu);
return menuBar;
public Container createContentPane() {
//Create the content-pane-to-be.
JPanel contentPane = new JPanel(new BorderLayout());
contentPane.setOpaque(true);
//Create a scrolled text area.
output = new JTextArea(5, 30);
output.setEditable(false);
scrollPane = new JScrollPane(output);
//Add the text area to the content pane.
contentPane.add(scrollPane, BorderLayout.CENTER);
return contentPane;
public void createPopupMenu() {
JMenuItem menuItem;
//Create the popup menu.
JPopupMenu popup = new JPopupMenu();
JMenuItem[] mi = createAMenu();
for(int i=0; i < mi.length; ++i)
popup.add(mi[i]);
//Add listener to the text area so the popup menu can come up.
MouseListener popupListener = new PopupListener(popup);
output.addMouseListener(popupListener);
private static void createAndShowGUI() {
//Make sure we have nice window decorations.
JFrame.setDefaultLookAndFeelDecorated(true);
//Create and set up the window.
JFrame frame = new JFrame("TextFieldDemo");
frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
//Create/set menu bar and content pane.
TextFieldDemo demo = new TextFieldDemo();
frame.setJMenuBar(demo.createMenuBar());
frame.setContentPane(demo.createContentPane());
//Create and set up the popup menu.
demo.createPopupMenu();
//Display the window.
frame.setSize(450, 260);
frame.setVisible(true);
public static void main(String[] args) {
//Schedule a job for the event-dispatching thread:
//creating and showing this application's GUI.
javax.swing.SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
createAndShowGUI();
class PopupListener extends MouseAdapter {
JPopupMenu popup;
PopupListener(JPopupMenu popupMenu) {
popup = popupMenu;
public void mousePressed(MouseEvent e) {
maybeShowPopup(e);
public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent e) {
maybeShowPopup(e);
private void maybeShowPopup(MouseEvent e) {
if (e.isPopupTrigger()) {
popup.show(e.getComponent(),
e.getX(), e.getY());
private JMenuItem[] createAMenu()
JMenu submenu;
JMenuItem menuItem;
JRadioButtonMenuItem rbMenuItem;
JCheckBoxMenuItem cbMenuItem;
JMenuItem items[] = new JMenuItem[8];
//a group of JMenuItems
menuItem = new JMenuItem("A text-only menu item",
KeyEvent.VK_T);
//menuItem.setMnemonic(KeyEvent.VK_T); //used constructor instead
menuItem.setAccelerator(KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(
KeyEvent.VK_1, ActionEvent.ALT_MASK));
menuItem.getAccessibleContext().setAccessibleDescription(
"This doesn't really do anything");
items[0]=menuItem;
menuItem = new JMenuItem("Both text and icon");
menuItem.setMnemonic(KeyEvent.VK_B);
items[1]=menuItem;
menuItem = new JMenuItem("icon only");
menuItem.setMnemonic(KeyEvent.VK_D);
items[2]=menuItem;
//a group of radio button menu items
ButtonGroup group = new ButtonGroup();
rbMenuItem = new JRadioButtonMenuItem("A radio button menu item");
rbMenuItem.setSelected(true);
rbMenuItem.setMnemonic(KeyEvent.VK_R);
group.add(rbMenuItem);
items[3]=rbMenuItem;
rbMenuItem = new JRadioButtonMenuItem("Another one");
rbMenuItem.setMnemonic(KeyEvent.VK_O);
group.add(rbMenuItem);
items[4]=rbMenuItem;
//a group of check box menu items
cbMenuItem = new JCheckBoxMenuItem("A check box menu item");
cbMenuItem.setMnemonic(KeyEvent.VK_C);
items[5]=cbMenuItem;
cbMenuItem = new JCheckBoxMenuItem("Another one");
cbMenuItem.setMnemonic(KeyEvent.VK_H);
items[6]=cbMenuItem;
//a submenu
submenu = new JMenu("A submenu");
submenu.setMnemonic(KeyEvent.VK_S);
menuItem = new JMenuItem("An item in the submenu");
menuItem.setAccelerator(KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(
KeyEvent.VK_2, ActionEvent.ALT_MASK));
submenu.add(menuItem);
menuItem = new JMenuItem("Another item");
submenu.add(menuItem);
items[7]=submenu;
return(items);

Answer 1

Hi;
I want to add chekboxes to a poupup menu ,how can I do that. I already have a submenu with names of columns ton hide and show them using chekcboxes and i want that same menu as a popup when i click in the tableheader.
thanx