First – Smart shapes cannot be used as buttons in a project that must meet accessibility standards. Smart shape buttons are not accessible using the tab/enter combination. While you may or may not be able to tab to the shape, selecting “enter” or the space bar will not trigger the button action.

Second – Smart shapes with text are not automatically read like a text caption. You must enter the text in the accessibility pop-up in order for the screen reader to access it. Smart shapes are objects, not captions – you must describe what is important in the shape. If it is being used for decoration or as a border, uncheck select and leave the alt text areas blank so the screen reader will ignore it.

Third – Smart shapes with more than one state must have any content for each state entered in the accessibility pop-up associated with the selected state. If you have a button that is changing the state of the smart shape to reflect feedback or reveal further content, make sure the new state has the content in the alt text area.

Fourth – if you really want smart shape style buttons in your project – here’s your work-around:

• Create the smart shape and make it accessible (but NOT as a button). Create separate accessibility text for each state if you want the shape to change content when the actual button is selected. If all you want to do is change the color of the “button/smart shape” when the actual button is selected, make sure you uncheck the auto-fill box in the accessibility pop-up so the screen reader ignores the shape altogether. Your visually impaired user doesn’t care if the color changes, as long as the actual button changes its name, role and state.

• Create a transparent text button that fits over your smart shape (personal opinion: the best choice for accessible projects is always the text button – it has never failed me). Create your action here – add the command to change the smart shape state to your advanced action and it will look like the button is actually the smart shape (make sure you take care of your button states appearance as well) Add alt-text to the button that explains what the user can do if the object is selected.

• You can group the two objects together to avoid misplacing them (also cleans up the timeline a bit).

Your screen reader will now read the button command, then read what is underneath the button. When you select the button, the reader will read the new alt text associated with the new state of the smart shape.