You rarely see the terms Flash and accessibility used together in a sentence, and yet the Flash Player has had the ability to integrate with assistive technologies for almost six years. In this session we'll dispell the myth that all Flash content is inaccessible, and show you how Flash can help to tackle accessibility issues that go beyond standard assistive technologies such as screen readers.
3. What is accessibility?
“making web sites accessible to
people with disabilities and at the
same time to people using different
operating systems, web browsers and
devices”
4. universality
What is accessibility?
“making web sites accessible to
people with disabilities and at the
same time to people using different
operating systems, web browsers and
devices”
9. types of disability
Visual
Total blindness, partially sighted, colour blindness
Auditory
Deaf or hard of hearing
Mobility
Limited movement and fine motor control
10. types of disability
Visual
Total blindness, partially sighted, colour blindness
Auditory
Deaf or hard of hearing
Mobility
Limited movement and fine motor control
Cognitive
Autism, ADHD, dyslexia, short-term memory loss
12. Flash & visual
disabilities
Assistive technologies
Flash hooks into MSAA on Windows
No support yet for other AT layers.
13. Flash & visual
disabilities
Assistive technologies
Flash hooks into MSAA on Windows
No support yet for other AT layers.
Zooming
Vector-based - native support for zooming.
Can hook into browser text resize with JS
14. Flash & visual
disabilities
Assistive technologies
Flash hooks into MSAA on Windows
No support yet for other AT layers.
Zooming
Vector-based - native support for zooming.
Can hook into browser text resize with JS
Colour adjustment
Flash 8 filters allow quick and easy colour
adjustment.
18. Flash & auditory
disabilities
Graphical representation
Flash is graphical by nature.
19. Flash & auditory
disabilities
Graphical representation
Flash is graphical by nature.
Audio captioning
3rd party solutions for displaying external caption
data available for Flash 7+
20. Flash & auditory
disabilities
Graphical representation
Flash is graphical by nature.
Audio captioning
3rd party solutions for displaying external caption
data available for Flash 7+
Video captioning
Flash 8 supports reading in external caption data.
Latest Flash Player 9 supports 3GPP TimedText
embedded in MP4 file.
23. Flash & mobility
disabilities
Keyboard control
Flash has built-in support for [TAB] key focussing.
Flash links [ENTER] and [SPACE] to mouse clicks.
Keyboard events are exposed in ActionScript.
25. Flash & cognitive
disabilities
No specific features
Flash doesn’t really have any specific features to
help with cognitive disabilities.
Rules that apply to standard web development
also apply to Flash.
