Re: Flash508.com

Well, it is in fact very easy to conform to 508, because if you make a mass
of inaccessible content al you have to do is provide a plain-text version.
This is the big difference between 508 and WCAG, which requires that you
provide another version which meets WCAG - a whole different ball of wax.

Although I have not seen any useful flash that actually meets even level A
for WCAG, I have seen a demo from the Macromedia site that claims to (in my
opinion incorrectly) and which if it was rewritten could reach level A.

This is what is claimed about it ion the macromedia site, followed by my
analysis of what it would take to get to level A (in my opinion):

<quote>
  ACCESSIBILITY: MACROMEDIA FLASH CONTENT FOR EVERYONE

  Developers from Swarm Interactive tell us how they retrofitted an
  existing Macromedia Flash presentation to be compliant with W3C and
  Section 508 accessibility guidelines:

  http://www.macromedia.com/go/edge_1201_accessibility/

</quote>

Why I think the claim to conform to W3C guidelines (at any level) is wrong,
and how to fix it to conform to level A.

The alternative fails to provide the visual information, which is the big
strength of the flash animation. And therefore, I would argue, fails P1
checkpoints 6.3 and 11.4

The flash animation itself also fails P1 checkpoints 2.2 and 7.1

There are a big list of P2 requirements that I think it fails.

Having said that, this is a good start. The major failure of requiring the
plugin, could be eliminated by exporting the images and the text content
together to a set of linked pages, or even exporting the images into the
single page tey produced as an alternative.

Changing the way that parts of the image are identified, for example by
providing high contrast in the colours for identifying the parts in the
image, and allowing the flicker to be stopped or slowed, would probably be
the rest of the requirements to get to level A conformance to WCAG. Double A
seems like it will be harder, but it is not impossible.

And in the meantime, for the small proportion of folks whose disability means
they use Jaws and Windows, it is certainly a big step in the right direction.

Cheers

Chaals


On Fri, 21 Dec 2001, Joe Clark wrote:

  I don't know where to begin with this. <http://www.flash508.com/> is
  a site allegedly teaching people how to make Flash presentations
  508-compatible, which everyone knows is completely impossible at
  present, though that will change in a few months.

Received on Friday, 21 December 2001 19:58:40 UTC