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RE: Flash and Checkpoint 1.3

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From: Steve Vosloo
Date: Aug 15, 2002 11:22PM

Thanks John.

>*Most* users requiring descriptions of visual files (gifs, jpegs, pngs,
streaming video, flash animations, etc.) are probably using a "user
agent" which *IS* reading out >loud text (JAWs, IBM HPR, etc.), so
providing a text file which storyboards the actions (or including the
action information as part of the overall script file) would >probably
suffice, but the guideline does not address this possibility.

<more opinion>
I totally agree. The guidelines should be divided into "real world" and
"ideal world" suggestions. The site I'm dealing with has thousands of
Flash movies. They're all complimentary to existing information -- it's
a school site. So a user (student) of the site reads the HTML text and
then sees a Flash animation of the theory. If she was reading a book,
she'd see a diagram. The web is interactive so we're able to offer an
animation. But the point is that without the animation the student would
still be supported by the other channels -- text and images. In this
spirit, and acknowledging that providing auditory descriptions of
thousands of Flash movies is prohibitively expensive, I think a text
description is a good 2nd option.
<more opinion>