Flash News Flash: It's Accessible

>1. Users must have the latest version of the Flash Player installed.

Oh, so what. Time marches on. And it's free.

>2. Users must use a screen reader that supports Microsoft Active 
>Accessibility (MSAA) (Do most versions of JAWS and other popular 
>readers currently IN USE support MSAA?)

No real choice about that. The access infrastructure on other 
platforms is too skimpy. 
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbser=1189>

>3. Navigating between Flash and non-Flash content, using the 
>keyboard only, is virtually impossible.

And they may not be able to fix that.

>4. Elaborate Flash movies may present information/content in 
>multiple places, simultaneously. Screen Reading software can only 
>describe information/content in one place at any given time.

Nature of the beast.

>5. Developers need to understand how to use the new accessibility features
>of Flash properly, and then they must take the time to do so.

Nature of the beast.

>Given the above, I think it is premature to conclude that all 
>accessibilityissues with Flash have been eliminated with the latest 
>release of Flash MX.

Yeah, but nobody went *that* far.

I have a piece coming out at AListApart.com this Friday on Flash access.
-- 

     Joe Clark | joeclark@joeclark.org
     Accessibility <http://joeclark.org/access/>
     Weblogs and articles <http://joeclark.org/weblogs/>
     <http://joeclark.org/writing/> | <http://fawny.org/>

Received on Wednesday, 24 April 2002 06:59:39 UTC