WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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RE: Integrating flash animation

for

From: Paul Bohman
Date: Feb 15, 2002 1:50PM

You have discovered one of the biggest accessibility problems about
Flash: it destroys the keyboard accessibility of a page. As far as I
know, there is no way around this at all. Once you enter a Flash object
with the keyboard, there is no way to exit. If anyone else has found a
way, I'd love to hear it, but I haven't run across any solutions.

Putting the Flash object in a frame may solve the keyboard accessibility
issue, but it introduces other concerns. Make sure that the trade-off is
worth it before taking this step.

One thing you can do to *sort of* slightly improve things is to put the
Flash object on the bottom of the page. Maybe this is not an option for
you. This doesn't really solve anything either, it just makes it more
likely that the user will find the desired link before arriving at the
Flash object.

Sorry. I don't have any good news or ideas to offer on this problem.
Paul Bohman
Technology Coordinator
WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind)
www.webaim.org
Utah State University
www.usu.edu