How To submenu:

Web pages Images Conferencing Chat Audio/Video PowerPoint PDF Advanced Multimedia

How To Multimedia Topics: Flash | Shockwave | Java | Whiteboards

Students Affected:

Principles: Provide Meaningful Alternatives, Degrade Gracefully

What It Means

Macromedia Flash is a graphic and animation program that has gained widespread popularity with Web designers. Many graphic artists build entire Web sites composed in Flash. Unfortunately, Flash has historically posed many accessibility problems. For example:

• Flash text is inaccessible to many people who use screen readers and Braille displays.
  
  
• Flash animations and images often do not include alternative text, which makes them inaccessible to people who cannot see.
  
  
• Flash navigation and interactions often require mouse-clicks (unless they are specifically programmed to be keyboard-accessible). This makes the file inaccessible to screen reader users and other people who use the keyboard to navigate.
  
  
• Flash audio and video is inaccessible to students who cannot hear.
  

Recent changes by Macromedia (in Flash version 6, or MX) make it possible to create Flash text and images that can be accessed by certain assistive technologies, most notably the Window-Eyes screen reader. Still, Flash can present accessibility challenges. The best option, especially if your Flash animation is highly interactive, is to create an alternate HTML version.

How It Works

1. Before you develop a Flash animation, consider whether you really need it. Flash can be a useful tool for creating engaging instructional animations and interactions, but should not be used simply to add "eye candy" to a Web page.
   
   

   Do not use Flash to build the main navigation for a Web site. This makes your content inaccessible to a portion of your users.

   
   
2. If you create a Flash animation, provide a link so that users can skip over it or turn it off. Place this link before the Flash object.
   
   
3. Use the most recent version of Flash (MX or later), and take advantage of the accessibility features.
   
   

   For more information about Macromedia Flash accessibility features, visit the Macromedia Accessibility Web site.

   
   
4. Provide text equivalents for all graphics and animations.
   
   
5. Make your animation keyboard-accessible so that people who cannot use a mouse are able to navigate and close the file.
   
   
6. If your Flash animation includes audio or video that conveys content, provide synchronized captions.
   
   
7. Convey the content in at least two formats—Flash and HTML. Make sure any HTML version you create is completely accessible (follow the guidelines in the How To: Images, How To: Web pages, and How To: Audio and video sections of this Web site).
   
   

   For more information about creating accessible Flash files, review the WebAIM Flash MX Accessibility tutorial.

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