Non-editable JTextAreas do not have any visual indication of keyboard focus. This makes it impossible for users to know where the focus has gone. This is particular problematic for keyboard-only users, because the JTextArea swallows Tab and Return. The user must know the focus is on this component in order to figure out they Control-Tab is needed to move out of the component.

This problem violoates the section 508 accessibility guideslines (the first half of the quote below):

"A well-defined on-screen indication of the
  current focus shall be provided that moves
  among interactive interface elements as the
  input focus changes. The focus shall be
  programmatically exposed so that assistive
  technology can track focus and focus
  changes."

Non-editable JTextAreas are often used for instruction text at the top of a dialog box or wizard page. A non-focusable JTextArea could be used instead, but this makes the instruction text unfocusable for screen readers as well. This setup would violate the second part of the 508 rule as quoted above.


###@###.### 2001-10-12
Note that this affects uneditable JTextFields as well, and possibly other components.
Comments copied from http://bugs.openjdk.java.net/show_bug.cgi?id=100229

Description From Dietmar Hechensteiner 2012-02-21 05:49:23 PDT

Created an attachment (id=257) [details]
Patch against openjdk7/jdk

http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4512626

Summary:
Non-editable text components do not have any visual indication of keyboard
focus. This makes it impossible for users to know where the focus has gone. The
user must know the focus is on this component in order to figure out they
Control-Tab is needed to move out of the component.

Description of the change:
Instead of binding the caret visibility to "enabled && editable" only "enabled"
was choosen, as it provides a visual indication of the focus.

Comment #1 From Tim Bell 2012-07-11 15:40:00 PDT

Closing. This is SUNBUG 4512626. The information here will be transferred to
that report.