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Re: Testing a flash movie

for

From: Bob Regan
Date: Nov 13, 2006 5:30PM

Asking whether a Flash movie is accessible is more akin to asking if a
desktop software application is accessible. It depends on how complex
the application is and what it is doing. Take a relatively simple
application used to display video that contains a simple play and pause
button. Here I will ask:

* Are captions for the audio displayed?
* Does the audio play on load and thus interfere with the screen reader?

* Is the button labeled for a screen reader?
* Is the change in the button's function (play v. pause) reflected as
the user interacts with the app?

You can find a whitepaper on creating accessible Flash at:

http://www.adobe.com/resources/accessibility/best_practices/best_practic
es_acc_flash.pdf

This should give you a head start. Obviously, as the application gets
more complex, so does the evaluation of its accessibility.

Measuring accessibility of the Flash app is more than turning off the
Flash object to be sure, especially if you are assuming that the end
user will actually interact with the Flash object itself.

Feel free to send additional questions.


Cheers,
Bob


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bob regan | adobe | 415.832.5305