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Re: Flash animation and accessibility on a particular web page.

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From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Nov 5, 2012 9:13AM

Sorry guys. The pressure and ill-informed complaints I received caused
me to act too soon. The problem is not Flash per se, in fact it
appears to be Javascript Carusels (two of them), on the front page,
that rotate headlines. This is something that we worked on in the
spring, but somehow got lost in software updates at that organization.
I believe there is plenty of literature on accessible carusels around,
Hans Hillon had a great one, Bryan as well I believe, but if anyone
has further suggestions, feel free to point out how best to hide these
from assistive technologies (most like using ARIA).
Thanks and sorry for a hastily written post, should not have gone out
to the list until I had a closer look.
-B

On 11/5/12, Birkir R. Gunnarsson < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Hi everyone
>
> I will never turn this into some sort of personal service request
> list, no worries, but I am faced with a particularly urgent problem,
> one that reflects the wider concern for Flash, animation and
> accessibility, a popular topic though not mentioned lately on this
> list, as far as I remember.
> The website
> www.ruv.is
> (the website of the Icelandic National Public Radio), seems to have
> just putting started a lot of Flash objects, pictures and ads on their
> page. At least my screen reading software loses focus all the time,
> jumps around, and I have gotten a deluge of complaints from our blind
> and VI users (this plays havoc with screen magnifiers as well), that
> the page has suddenly become completely inaccessible (funny since I
> have done a lot of work with them on ARIA accessibility, labelling
> buttons etc .. goes to show our work can be frustrating as well as
> fun.
> Just out of professional curiosity, could anyone check over the page
> for me to confirm that Flash is the issue, and if you have pointers to
> the latest Flash accessibility guides, could you please post. I point
> people to a very good WebAIM guide, though a few years old, that
> discusses how Flash is more accessible if it is set to Transparent,
> and it will subsequently be ignored by screen readers/magnifiers.
> Are there any updates to this, and are there ways to keep these Flash
> objects on the page for sighted users (well, for who I do not know,
> since these are not exactly popular with anyone), without messing up
> accessibility for visually impaired users? Or is the only snesible
> suggestion I can make to take these out altogether, at least the
> animation part? How would you handle this folks. Always a pleasure to
> follow discussions on this list and to be able to occasionally tap
> into the wealth of expertese here is simply an honor.
>
> Cheers
> -Birkir
>