amy g's List: Accessibility - Flash

• A user who has Flash Player 6 installed, and a screen reader that supports it, can theoretically navigate Flash MX generated content that is exported for Flash Player 6 in much the same way as they would an accessible HTML page. They can read text content line by line, hear descriptions of movies and images and tab from one actionable item to the next.
• For people who do not use a mouse to access the Web, Flash content captures the keyboard if the user has Flash Player 6 or lower installed, not allowing the user to tab beyond the Flash. This is a major problem for visual mouse-impaired users and for vision impaired screen-reader/keyboard users. The problem has been solved with Flash Player 7.
• Providing text equivalents for images will be of little value if a vision impaired user who is relying on a screen reader is unable to hear what is being read. If a site contains background music or sounds it is desirable to include an option for muting that sound so that screen reader users are able to hear the text equivalents to the Flash content.
• The W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines recommend colour alone should not be used to communicate information since people who can't differentiate between colours may not be able to access that information. Developers of Flash material should remain mindful of this guideline, particularly when it comes to choosing text and link colours. They should also avoid using colours and colour names as action keys, for example "select the red text for the next page".

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• Although most assistive technologies tend to be implemented on Windows with Internet Explorer, screen readers written for other platforms cannot take advantage of Flash's accessibility features.
• you must conduct user testing with a variety of end users, platforms, browsers, and assistive technologies to ensure that your Flash content is accessible to the widest array of users. You may need to re-evaluate your use of Flash. Perhaps another technology may work better. Because the vast majority of Flash content cannot be made natively accessible, it will probably be vital for you to provide a non-Flash alternative for those that cannot or choose not to access your Flash multimedia.

• There are three ways in which the Flash content can be made accessible to screen reader users:

    
   
  1. Make the Flash content natively accessible to the screen reader.
    
  2. Make the Flash content self-voicing, eliminating the need for the screen reader.
    
  3. Provide an accessible alternative to the Flash content.

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