Dr Sofia Celic, Web Accessibility Consultant, Vision Australia Foundation, 454 Glenferrie Road, Kooyong, Victoria 3144. Email: Sofia.Celic@visionaustralia.org.au
Dr Andrew Arch, Manager Online Accessibility Consulting, Vision Australia Foundation, 454 Glenferrie Road, Kooyong, Victoria 3144. Email: Andrew.Arch@visionaustralia.org.au
Flash, Accessibility, Multimedia, Usability, Assistive Technology, Web, Education, People with Disabilities, Online Training Modules, Design, Human Factors, Graphical User Interface.
Flash developers have traditionally overlooked accessibility, or been unable to address it directly by following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) recommendations and techniques. In this paper, we describe the application of WCAG checkpoints to the Flash MX multimedia development platform and discuss how accessibility can be incorporated using a variety of techniques.
Flash MX includes some features that improve accessibility of Flash movies, particularly for users browsing with a screen reader and users requiring presentational control. Currently, access to these features requires an Internet Explorer host page, rendering many HTML-specific WCAG checkpoints, such as primary language specification, satisfiable.
Flash MX movies and most elements can have text alternatives assigned and, conversely, access to inappropriate elements can be prohibited. In addition to providing a text alternative for visual elements, this feature can be used to provide context information, correct pronunciation of initialisms, abbreviation expansions and identification of headings, lists and quotes.
Flash MX’s innate scripting language, ActionScript, provides some powerful methods for developers. With careful planning, this allows presentational aspects, such as font and color, to be controlled by the user through preference settings.
Although Flash MX movies are not capable of meeting the accessibility requirements of all WCAG checkpoints, Flash MX certainly does provide methods to develop more accessible movies and satisfy most of the checkpoints.
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