Accessibility: Multimedia and interactivity

Flash, Director and other interactive software

Some accessibility software has difficulty in processing web content information stored in elements that require use of a plug-in for a web browser. If your project depends on such technologies, you should seriously consider generating HTML alternatives.

Produce alternatives

You might want to try, for example, using a database-driven approach to generate files or storing and structuring all project content using XML and then building an HTML version, perhaps using technologies such as Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT). What is important is that the same information should be available; it does not mean that the alternative should be technically or even visually similar.

Flash Player - accessibility features

Adobe Flash Player 8 has features that allow people with visual disabilities to access rich media on the web using either Window-Eyes from GW Micro or JAWS from Freedom Scientific. The Adobe website has information on making Macromedia Flash 8 resources more accessible.

We would recommend that developers always have their tools upgraded to the latest versions as accessibility support in developer tools is gradually improving. Accessibility features tend to start off being 'add-ons' or patches to a product and end up being incorporated into the next full version. Getting users to upgrade their players/plug-ins is quite difficult. While websites should encourage users to upgrade, they should not force them to do so, and users with older versions should not be deprived of the same content.

Aim for accessibility within interactive environments

Even though there are still technical barriers to using these technologies, you should apply other accessibility techniques within these objects.

Just as with desktop products or HTML web pages, make sure the colour scheme has good contrast between foreground text and backgrounds, that elements are clearly labelled, that you can use the object with keyboard commands, and that you can tab between fields, etc.

One form of interaction that causes many problems is relying on a mouse to do 'drag and drop' type operations. Make sure elements can be selected with the keyboard and can be moved with the cursor keys. Make sure that if there is visual feedback triggered by the mouse, this is also given keyboard equivalents.