Thank you Maya for responding.

This is what i have done:  I have added the javascript on top of the aspx page where my chart is going to. But I get error:
Microsoft JScript runtime error: Object expected

Please let me know what I am missing. Thanks

<script type="text/javascript">
        $(document).ready(function () {          
            var img = $get('UltraChart1_BaseImage');
            img[0].tabIndex = 1;
        });

    </script>
 
<igchart:UltraChart  ID="UltraChart" runat="server" Section508Compliant="true" Enabled="true" Tooltips-Display="Never" AcceptsFocus="True"
    EmptyChartText="Data Not Available. Please call UltraChart.Data.DataBind() after setting valid Data.DataSource" TabIndex = "43"
    Version="9.2" >

Thanks Maya.  I did get the image and able to tab through the image but the screen reader still does not read the alt text from these iamges.

All these alternate texts are set(look at the code below).

 but setting the tabindex and accesskey on img still does not announce these alternate texts. 

 i do see the tabindex being tabbed from each area on the map but the screen reader does not read anything from its alt texts.

  this.UltraChart.Focus();
        this.UltraChart.Section508Compliant = true;
        this.UltraChart.Section508.ChartItems.AltTextFormatString = "<ITEM_LABEL>: <DATA_VALUE:#> (<PERCENT_VALUE:#>%)";
        this.UltraChart.Section508.ChartItems.TitleFormatString = "<ITEM_LABEL>: <DATA_VALUE:#> (<PERCENT_VALUE:#>%)";
        this.UltraChart.Section508.ChartImage.AltTextFormatString = "Program Other";
        this.UltraChart.Section508.ChartImage.AltFormatString = "Program Other";
        this.UltraChart.Tooltips.Display = TooltipDisplay.MouseMove;      
     

Thank Maya for your quick response.

This is what I have found out:

JAWS is reading the image alternate text when i set the tabindex using the clientid of the img tag.  But the tabindex is not set to the actual value but the last tabindex on the page.

e.g, if I want the tabindex to be 5, it will tab through the whole form and goto my chart map area at the last tab through the page.  If I have 10 controls, and chart happens to be the 5th, it will skip the chart and then goto my chart at the end.  But if I set the accesskey at the same time in JAVA script, and I hit ALT and use use accesskey, it goes to my image area map and announces th value. 

Please see what is missing, since I need to to work using the tabs.

This is my code:

function pageLoad()
{                
  var img = document.getElementById("<%= this.UltraChart.ClientID %>" + "_BaseImage");
  img.tabIndex = 40;
  img.accessKey = "V";                
      
}

Another thing I noticed is that if I get rid of the USEMAP property from the image tag, the tabindex works fine.  But it then looses the focus from the map area.  But if USEMAP is there, the tabindex is not there.  It does focus on the image and the map area but at the end.  I need to go  in the order of the form.