Comments on: A New Approach for Flash Accessibility

By: Ian

Ian — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 20:01:53 +0000

horrendously out of date reply, but just in case you’re got notifications for this Susan – tabbing is also useful for other groups, for example if you aren’t able to use a mouse and need to use a keyboard to operate your browser.

By: susan chaisson

susan chaisson — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:53:31 +0000

oops – never thought of that. I guess there hasn’t been much more talk on this site since this discussion took place. I’m wondering why accessibility is still not being discussed much on the internet. People trying to find more information so they can design for it (like myself) aren’t getting much on the web!

By: Stuart Johnston

Stuart Johnston — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:22:53 +0000

Because they don’t or can’t use a traditional pointing device (mouse).

By: Phil Teare

Phil Teare — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:41:49 +0000

Hey Patrick. Yep – good point. But wouldn’t this be neater for VI users? So both solutions would be good. To my mind it would be neater for VI users because ARIA would solve the dynamic nature of Flash for blind users. I.e. what happens when content updates (how and when to notify or read out new content…). Rather than building another framework for flash.

By: Susan Chaisson

Susan Chaisson — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:07:18 +0000

I’ve been trying to use the accessibility panel in flash to create an accessible course built in Lectora (which is accessible). The tutorial I completed using macromedia’s OWN files doesn’t even work with my screen reader. Has anyone had any experience with this? It reads the buttons but skips over the text boxes, even though they are labelled, and tab #’d in the swf.

On another note, why would a sighted user want to tab in/out of a flash movie?

By: Michael Krotscheck

Michael Krotscheck — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 22:39:27 +0000

By all means, go get started. I haven’t gotten into it on anything other than an architectural level, and far be it from me to proscribe an approach. Keep me posted, if you don’t mind me getting involved when my schedule clears up again.

By: Phil Teare

Phil Teare — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:18:42 +0000

Hi again,

Are you laying claim to any IP on this, or can I start a BSD license project without worrying in that regard?

By: patrick h. lauke

patrick h. lauke — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:38:45 +0000

and what about sighted keyboard users? they DO need/want to tab in and out of flash movies themselves, no?

By: Phil Teare

Phil Teare — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:08:44 +0000

exactly.

Its a great idea, and similar to something I’ve been toying with in idle moments.

Have you or has anyone started anything on this?

By: Michael Krotscheck

Michael Krotscheck — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:06:15 +0000

Actually, in this case that’d be an advantage. Remember, you don’t want the user to interact with the flash movie itself, simply with the abstracted DOM hierarchy it’s sitting on.

By: Phil Teare

Phil Teare — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:04:21 +0000

you still can’t tab in and out of a flash movie in FF

So in practice, nope, still no go.

But this is great. Would love to talk some about this…

By: Michael Krotscheck

Michael Krotscheck — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 21:50:50 +0000

I stand corrected, Thanks! Though a bit of research shows that this is a relatively recent improvement via the IAccessible2 inclusion in FF3. Still, a great development overall…. though it’s still not cross platform.

By: Aaron Leventhal

Aaron Leventhal — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 18:30:23 +0000

> Flash content at this point can only interface with several select screen readers,
> only on IE running on Windows. This is because the Flash player uses Microsoft’s
> Accessibility Interface (whose official name I don’t know), which is, of course, only
> supported in and via Microsoft technologies.

Correction. Flash is accessible in Firefox, via Microsoft Active Accessibility, which Firefox supports, as do numerous non-Microsoft technologies.