Re: Opinions please - flash site, flash navigation - but accessible alternative

On 1/21/02 11:47 AM,  Jim Byrne (j.byrne@gcal.ac.uk) wrote:

> 
> Users will enter a compliant page and then choose between HTML and Flash. if
> they choose HTML they get a compliant site and if they choose Flash they
> don't. The Flash site is considered to be 'the main site' - and will not be
> compliant with W3c Accessibility Guidelines.
If this is the chosen route, you need to make sure that the developers hit
as many of the WCAG guidelines as possible.  Just because the site is made
with Flash doesn't mean that the web content guidelines should be abandoned.

Depending on what the site looks like and does, you may be able to have a
Flash navigation and other flash features in an html site.  There are ways
of adding html-based alternatives to flash that will allow the site to be
accessible (e.g. adding a layer beneath the flash navigation that contains
html links).

If you are planning on including audio or video, these can be captioned and
described both in the Flash and in the html versions.

You may have heard that the next version of Flash will add authoring support
for creating accessible content, and the next player will include support
for assistive technologies that support MSAA.  Perhaps you can get the
developers to fix the Flash side of the site after the release of the next
version of Flash?

A great advantage of your site being in HTML is that you can fix small
problems without going back to the developer.  Unless you get the FLA (the
authoring file type) as well as the SWF (the output file type) as
deliverables you could be stuck going back to the developers for every
little fix.  

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Kirkpatrick, Technical Project Coordinator
CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media
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Boston, MA  02134
E-mail: andrew_kirkpatrick@wgbh.org
Web site: ncam.wgbh.org

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Received on Monday, 21 January 2002 13:24:03 UTC