WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: XHTML tab order and Flash

for

From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Aug 18, 2009 11:10AM

I added an additional example to the blog entry at http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility/2009/04/firefox_focus_and_actual_links_1.html. There is now a link to a page with HTML content before and after the Flash content.

Just so you know, this example does use the tabindex attribute, but the script that is invoked by the Flash content and the tabindex attributes and values are added dynamically. If you are doing additional scripting work that does similar things then you'll want to make sure that there are no conflicts, but that isn't a surprise when integrating multiple scripts.

The extra tab that you're noticing just before and after the Flash content when using Firefox is a generated link in the HTML that helps mediate the focus getting to the Flash content. I agree that it isn't ideal, but it is part of the solution we have here to get around the problem in getting focus passed between Firefox and Flash player.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick

Senior Product Manager, Accessibility

Adobe Systems

<EMAIL REMOVED>


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Steven Henderson
Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 10:51 AM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] XHTML tab order and Flash

In Firefox, I too am getting unreliable tab ordering with AccLinkExample
(for my purposes, I have modified it as below, to emulate a real-world
XHTML/Flash scenario).

Taking my example, in Firefox, further illustrates the seemingly random tab
ordering. Once the Flash object is in focus, the Flash links tab fine, then
the XHTML links come after the Flash object ... but this concludes that
XHTML and Flash can be tabbed between ... just don't know how much work (if
possible) would be required to develop a logical tab order that would work
across browsers too. I am going to play with the example some more.



My AccLinkExample modification:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<!-- saved from url=(0014)about:internet -->
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<title>AccLinkExample</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=utf-8" />
<style type="text/css" media="screen">
#AccLinkExample { height:300; }
body {
margin:0; padding:0; overflow:hidden; }
</style>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="swfobject_2_1.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
var flashvars = {};
var params = {};
params.scale = "noscale";
params.salign = "tl";
var attributes = {};
attributes.id = "AccLinkExampleSWF";
attributes.name = "AccLinkExampleSWF";
attributes.tabindex = "4";
swfobject.embedSWF("AccLinkExample.swf",
"AccLinkExample", "100%", "300", "9.0.0", "expressInstall.swf", flashvars,
params, attributes);
</script>

</head>
<body>
<h1>Demo page</h1>
<div>
<a href="#1">Link 1</a>
</div>
<div id="AccLinkExample">
<a href="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer">
<img
src="http://www.adobe.com/images/shared/download_buttons/get_flash_player.gi
f" alt="Get Adobe Flash player" />
</a>
</div>
<div><a href="#4">Link 5</a></div>
</body>
</html>





-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of
<EMAIL REMOVED>
Sent: 18 August 2009 15:02
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] XHTML tab order and Flash

On Tue, 18 Aug 2009, Andrew Kirkpatrick wrote:
> Try the example posted with this blog entry to see how it works from the
keyboard for you:
http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility/2009/04/firefox_focus_and_actual_links_
1.html

Navigating with Dragon NaturallySpeaking emulating the keyboard
and Firefox 3, I have mixed result with that demo. On the one
hand, as soon as I load the example I have some keyboard focus:
I can tab to individual elements although of course I don't have
my usual direct selection options (search-ahead and mouseless
browsing).

But once I follow one of the links and then go back in my browser
to the Flash demo, I've lost my keyboard focus. Not only can I no
longer tab to the individual links, but I can no longer manage my
browser (e.g. by going back in a tab) until I do the usual Flash
escape of emulating mouse clicks outside of the flash page in
order to get money keyboard focus back.

In other words, in my experience, "accessible Flash" still really
isn't.

-deborah