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Re: Flash animation and accessibility on a particular webpage.

for

From: Bryan Garaventa
Date: Nov 5, 2012 1:14PM


Is the purpose to hide it entirely?

If so, and they are just images with no value, and if there are no active
elements, you could put aria-hidden="true" on the container to hide it from
screen readers. This may solve the refresh issue, but it would need to be
tested to be certain.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Birkir R. Gunnarsson" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
To: "WebAIM Discussion List" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Monday, November 05, 2012 8:13 AM
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Flash animation and accessibility on a particular
webpage.


> 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
>>
> > >