Flash and WCAG

Hey Wendy... Let me see if I can give you some answers, and begin a bit of a
discussion on the finer points of attaining accessibility with flash.

> 1. In the context of Checkpoint 1.4 [0], Cynthia Shelley asked [1], "Does
> anyone know if Flash supports synchronizing captions?"

This is possible via several different methods... Some are fairly simple,
some are a bit more convoluted.. I would be interested in maybe making an
example site illustrating this, maybe with someone on the working group (Mr.
Neff?)...

> 2. In July the working group published "Non-W3C Techniques for Web Content
> Accessibility Guidelines 1.0" [2].  It has two Flash related
> examples.  What do you think of them?  Can you improve upon them?  Are
> there others you can suggest?  The current suggestions only discuss what to
> do if the user does not have a Flash plug-in enabled or installed.  Have
> you investigated how to make Flash directly accessible?  In other words,
> have you tested how to make a Flash presentation usable by a person with a
> screen reader?

We have tech notes available and several white papers documenting most, if
not all of these concerns.. but it would be great to get all of the concerns
together and shoot them into one central place... What steps do you
recommend to get this ball rolling?

> These were submitted by Rob Neff who used to work with the U.S. Mint.  Did
> you work with him on that site?
No I did not... I have only had a few conversations with Rob and none of
them concerned the U.S. Mint site.

> What is your background?  Have you been working on Web accessibility issues
> for very long? How aware are you of the accessibility issues with Flash?
I have a pretty strong web design and programming background... I worked at
Disney for the past 3 years doing backend systems design and research for
emerging Internet technologies. I have a strong knowledge of Flash and
various other "Multimedia" web technologies.

-- 
Michael Williams
Macromedia Flash Team
415-832-5991

Received on Thursday, 14 September 2000 17:14:36 UTC