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Re: Re[2]: Text alternative for flash animation

for

From: Stephanie Sullivan
Date: Sep 24, 2004 1:29PM

On 9/23/04 8:31 PM, "Jared Smith" simply typed the following:

> 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.

Actually, I would love to see some numbers on this. I have a good friend who
is blind. I asked her to check some Flash for me to see if I had made it
accessible. Her email back said, "I don't have Flash installed." She has no
reason for it really, and since many/most developers don't bother to do
things to make it accessible, it stands to reason that many people with
screen readers do not install it. I understand that Macromedia has made
strides with making the text in it more accessible (which is also good for
search engines), but I don't know how long it will take that information to
A) trickle to the developers and B) trickle to the end users who don't have
it installed.

I wrote a free article a couple months ago about using wmode="opaque" to
keep Flash from grabbing focus (making it more accessible) and for giving
you the ability to place it as you need to with DHTML windows and such...
That solves one bit of the puzzle (though not the one the original poster
was discussing about alternate content).
http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=E5141

An interesting thing I'm experimenting with right now -- related to both
Flash and using "nice" fonts for headings is Mike Davidson's sIFR
replacement technique. So far, I'm extremely impressed. It uses a dynamic
text ability in Flash Pro to create a swf. This tiny swf (about 8-9k)
contains your font characters and is called using JS. It then displays the
text you've put in for your headings in the lovely font. If you don't have
Flash 6 or JS installed, you get a nicely styled CSS header instead. Either
way, search engines and assistive technology can read the text since the
code in your body element simply shows: This is my heading ...
Likely I'm not explaining well since I'm typing quickly... You can read
about it here:
http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2004/08/sifr
(use the links in the side bar to get the most recent beta... Presently it's
at 2.0b2 .. But 3.0 is in the works.

All that was to say, if you're using Flash just to take advantage of the
"look" of it -- nicer font choices and such ... This could be a viable
alternative. ;)

Stephanie Sullivan
Community MX Partner :: http://www.communitymx.com/author.cfm?cid=1008
Team Macromedia for Dreamweaver :: http://tinyurl.com/6huw3
Co-Author .: "Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 Magic" :. New Riders
VioletSky Design :: http://www.violetsky.net

"To me, the computer is just another tool. It's like a pen. You have to have
a pen, and know penmanship, but neither will write the book for you." -- Red
Burns