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Re[2]: Text alternative for flash animation

for

From: Jared Smith
Date: Sep 23, 2004 6:31PM

> Ive been using the tag to insert alternate text.
> or using the tag because Im testing with javascript to see
> wether flash is installed.

Be very careful with assuming that noembed or noscript are going to
somehow make your embedded media or javascript content accessible.
Noembed and noscript only display when the user does not have embedded
media or scripting enabled - and most (I assume) users who have
disabilities will not fit into this category. If I have embedded media
enabled, otherwise inaccessible content is not somehow made accessible because
you have noembed content. I will never see it, but will only see the
main embedded content, which is inaccessible. In short, these two
elements can never be used as an alternative to inaccessible content.
They are intended for use when the user agent does not support (or has
disabled) the technology at hand.

> With in the element you need to put an image or text in there to
> provide an alternative to the flash.
>
> eg...
>
> <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="/first.swf" width="707"
> height="267" title="Flash Movie Animation">
>
> <img src="/flashalt.gif" width="707" height="267" alt="Flash Move
> Animation Alternative" />
>

Unfortunately, this method fails in most browsers (especially Internet
Explorer). Though the object tag is intended to work this way, it does
not in most cases. And, as above, if my browser DOES support the media
in the parent object tag then the internal media would not (or at
least, should not) be displayed or read by a screen reader. In your
example, if a screen reader simply had the Flash plugin installed, then
the alternative text of the internal image would be ignored. And I
assume that most screen reader users probably DO have Flash. And if they
didn't, then chances are their browser won't interpret the embedded image
correctly anyway.

> WCAG requires a text alternative to

Only if the element is itself not text or cannot be interpreted as
text (i.e., images with alt text, flash with alt text, etc.) I believe
you must only either ensure the content is accessible or provide an
accessible alternative (not necessarily just text). If you want a page
with Flash content to be accessible, you must either make the Flash
object natively accessible (though I would argue that this is rarely
possible) or provide an accessible alternative. The object tag does not
have an 'alt' attribute and using the options above will not work, so
you are left with the decision of either providing the alternative in
context or on another accessible page.

Jared Smith
WebAIM (Web Accessibility In Mind)