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October 10, 2006

Flash, accessibility

Flash, accessibility: "The web accessibility community needs to be actively engaged with the Flash accessibility community. There's a surprising amount of cross-over and idea-swapping opportunities to be explored." Written by someone in UK with penname "isolani"... this Flash-specific page is one of a set of four, discussing aspects of "Accessibility In Trouble". I think that many User Interfaces must aim for wide audiences, and don't want to risk cutting off minorities from participating, whether it's a minority of physical ability (sight, hearing, motor), or mental ability (half of all people have subaverage IQ), experience with the English language, choice of hardware and software, and so on... sounds like "isolani" is discussing similar ideas in his conclusion. When you read this essay, what do you see in it...?

Posted by JohnDowdell at October 10, 2006 08:08 PM

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Comments

Flash has the capability of being accessible to audiences that cannot be reached with HTML/CSS/DOM, particularly learning difficulties and low literacy. I've seen some impressive implementations of accessible Flash, enough to convince me that it is time to take Flash accessibility seriously.

There's two problems to bringing accessible Flash more into the mainstream:
1.) The webstandards groupies who will shout down any use of flash with the argument its inaccessible because it requires a plugin
2.) A frequently-heard reaction from the Flash community of "Accessibility? None of my clients ask for it, so why should I bother?"

To me, 1.) is the biggest barrier accessible Flash developers will face. And its a barrier based on a misconception or distortion of what web accessibility is about. Unfortunately the attitude is quite prevalent.

Thank you for your post - the message does need to get out that Flash is a perfectly acceptable way of building an accessible online experience.

Hopefully you've seen the recent article on the BBC: Designing a more accessible web - its very encouraging.

(I write the blog you've referenced - thanks for the thoughtful comments)

Posted by: Isofarro at October 30, 2006 03:11 AM