Re: Encrypted Media proposal: Summary of the discussion so far

On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 5:14 PM, Steve Faulkner
<faulkner.steve@gmail.com> wrote:
> "This means that our Linux customers are capable of watching video using
> Flash to run DRM."
>
> unfortunately the flash plugin on non windows paltforms does not have the
> accessibility support [1]
>
> and is unlikely to as I understand that Adobe has recently shelved their
> plans to add acc support on Mac and linux.
>
> So from the perspective of users with disabilties something that disengages
> video from flash plugin dependency would be a good thing.

That's most easily addressed by developers who need Flash for DRM
limiting their use of Flash to a viewport that does not need details
in the accessibility tree and cannot receive keyboard focus, building
DHTML controls to manipulate the Flash movie player, and using DHTML
for any overlays over the video that need user interaction. Flash DRM
video sites tend to be JS dependent anyway so I don't think we lose
much on the progressive enhancement front, and switching to HTML5
<video> would require switching to DHTML controls, so I don't think
there's an added cost to keeping Flash around for the viewport itself.

I'm aware Flash is nominally an open specification and I'm aware of
the existence of things like Gnash, but I'm not clear whether it's
feasible to build a Flash player implementation that could be bundled
on Debian and access videos that use Flash for DRM. Does anyone have
any idea?

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis

Received on Wednesday, 14 March 2012 20:56:17 UTC