WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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From: Schuffman, Jan (General Services - ADA)
Date: Oct 5, 2004 8:16AM

I agree that its demands limit its audience, but as for
accessibility/usability issues, here's my 2 cents' worth of random
thoughts:

Although this might be a hard sell to the client, it's better to offer
visitors the choice of whether or not to use Flash. Sites that
automatically load and play Flash any time they detect a Flash player,
often leave screen-reader users in the cold. For example, in a
two-person household, one has normal vision so benefits from Flash, so
the Flash player is installed on the computer, which is shared with the
other person. The other person uses a screen-reader and would rather not
have to deal with Flash, but since the player is on the machine, most
sites auto-launch the Flash stuff. This is the situation for a couple
who are friends of mine.

Some screen-readers know what to do with properly (for accessibility)
constructed Flash, but that's a combination of two requirements that's
still pretty rare - Flash apps created to be accessible, and screen
readers that can render them.

Presuming a blind user has normal hearing, he/she will be able to hear
what the character says. It's important not to have the character refer
to things the blind visitor can't see on the screen.

If you're required to have that particular kind of animation, I agree
that you should absolutely have real-time captioning.

The blurb you cited says in part, "Only those people who download Rovion
BlueStream will be able to see these video clips." What happens on
machines that don't have BlueStream on them? If the site works perfectly
well on a machine without BlueStream, it may be less of a hassle. OTOH,
if the site throws up nag screens to try to get the visitor to download
BlueStream, that could be a problem, not only from a general
user-friendliness standpoint but from an accessibility point as well.