Auditory description visual track

I have a question that relates to Priority 1 Checkpoint 1.3:

"1.3. Until user agents can automatically read aloud the text equivalent
of a visual track provide an auditory description of the important
information of the visual track of a multimedia presentation."

Our client has a whole bunch of Flash 5 movies on their site. I'm
suggesting to them to provide a detailed text description of each movie.
This is a temporary measure with the ultimate goal of making all their
movies accessible in Flash 6. Is this checkpoint saying that the text
description must be provided as an audio file too? Surely screen readers
will simply read the text and thereby provide the audio description?

The text is not necessarily meant to be synchronised, e.g. a description
could be "Animation of planets orbiting around the sun." Is there any
way around this issue? Is a Flash movie which contains quizzes regarded
as a multimedia presentation?

Thanks
Steve

Steve Vosloo
Division Manager
Usability Junction

Tel:    + 27 (0) 21 409 7961
Fax:   + 27 (0) 21 409 7050
Cell:   + 27 (0) 83 463 0012
Web:  www.usabilityjunction.com

Received on Tuesday, 13 August 2002 06:46:30 UTC