WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Technical explanation on how Flash interupts screen readers

for

From: deborah.kaplan
Date: Nov 15, 2010 9:51AM

Terrill Bennett wrote:

> I have no problems using JAWS or NVDA and:

Keyboard control for Flash is different from screenreader
compatibility, though.

The page about Flash on the webaim site states that only Internet
Explorer/Flash on Windows allows keyboard escape. Terrill, based
on the links you sent, it looks like this information is no
longer accurate.

> http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player/

This one doesn't allow pure keyboard escape in Firefox + Windows,
but it does allow access to the mouseless browsing add-on. (I
couldn't get it to recognize any other keystroke commands that
would escape from the Flash object, but in conjunction with MLB
that means you can use keyboard or voice to escape from the
object.) You can't enter the object without MLB (WCAG 2.1.1),
though. And it still keyboard traps in Opera. I can't test on
Safari or chrome.

> http://www.theworkshop.co.uk/video-player

This one doesn't seem to recognize any keystroke commands that
will escape from the Flash object, MLB or otherwise, but it DOES
allow tabbing out of the Flash object. Only player I've ever seen
that does that, actually. But the tabbing out does not work on
Opera, and as above, there's no way to enter the Flash object
except using Firefox + MLB.

> http://ncam.wgbh.org

This one does not allow keyboard escape.

So apparently, it is sort of possible to make Flash content
accessible under certain circumstances with one of the primary
user agents in use, and I take back my statement that it is de
facto impossible. It is possible for programmers to write Flash
in such a way that you can satisfy WCAG 2.1.2, and all of about
three programmers seem to have figured out how to do it. Sort of.

-Deborah