Microsoft UI Automation is the accessibility framework for Microsoft Windows. It addresses the needs of assistive technology products and automated test frameworks by providing programmatic access to information about the user interface (UI). In addition, UI Automation enables control and application developers to make their products accessible.

For information on programming best practices for accessibility, see Accessibility Best Practices in the .NET Framework documentation.

This documentation describes the UI Automation support for Silverlight applications. For information on programming for UI Automation client tools, see UI Automation Clients for Managed Code in the .NET Framework documentation.

UI Automation uses control patterns to represent common control behaviors. These control patterns are similar to those defined in .NET Framework. For information on the control patterns defined in .NET Framework, see UI Automation Control Patterns Overview in the .NET Framework documentation.

Silverlight controls support UI Automation through a tree of peer classes. The peer classes are roughly equivalent to UI Automation control types but are specific to Silverlight elements.