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Re: Captivate Debate

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From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Jun 28, 2011 9:45AM

The debate is centered around the application of 1194.21 (g). Applications shall not override user-selected contrast and color selections and other individual display attributes.

Per Adobe's VPAT for Captivate "The Player does not inherit user display settings."

I'll also note that we provided the rating of "Does Not Support" for this item. However, this isn't necessarily the end of the story. Compliance with Section 508 standards is based on what is implemented and delivered, not necessarily what comes out of the box automatically. Since a captivate movie is offered most often as a part of a web page the question is whether the author can provide a compliant experience overall - so we know that the Flash Player doesn't respond to Windows system color changes, and this has nothing to do with the Captivate output except that Captivate uses Flash as an output format. Captivate does offer the ability to customize the colors and contrast on the authoring side, so an author could offer a few color/contrast options for users to choose from, either as a separate but parallel version (e.g. provide a link to "view this presentation with high contrast white-on-black color scheme") or if the author was skilled in Flash development they can export the Captivate project to be opened in the Flash authoring tool for custom work to provide a color-switcher feature in the output. Obviously, both of these represent extra work.

On the other hand the Adobe VPAT claims compliance with 1194.22 (m). When a web page requires that an applet, plug-in, or other application be present on the client system to interpret page content, the page must provide a link to a plug-in or applet that complies with ยง1194.21(a) through (l). Our interpretation of this standard is that there needs to be a link to the player and that the player must meet the requirements of 1194.21.

We need to separate "player" as in "flash player" and "Captivate output content player". 22(m) refers to the Flash Player, and this is met by the Captivate output. The wording of this standard is confusing, but that is because it was written before people were thinking about web applications seriously. If this meant that you needed to link to the Captivate "player" would you need to provide a link to the URL that you are already at and viewing the player? That wouldn't make sense - this means the Flash Player. I feel that this is built into the code for the object element in the HTML, but if you feel more comfortable linking to the Flash Player installer, create an HTML link to here: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/fp_distribution3.html

Hope this helps.

AWK