Skills for Access

Why this is important

For people with no functional vision, it is impossible to read on screen textual content. Reading on-screen text may also be very difficult or uncomfortable for many other people, including those with less severe visual impairments, dyslexia, or other specific learning difficulty. In each case, software that automatically converts text to synthetic speech can be a great help, whether a full-blown screen reader as used by blind computer users, or a reading program that allows sighted people to select on-screen text and have it read to them. This means that it is important that efforts are taken to provide content in Flash resources in a way that either allows it to be accessed and read by text-to-speech software, or is available in audio format.

General Principles

Traditionally, Flash has presented screen readers with serious accessibility barriers, but recent advances in Flash have made it much easier to make Flash content directly accessible to screen reader users. Even so, Flash developers must take specific steps to make content screen reader accessible - and usable - and at the same time be aware of the limitations of what Flash can do. Fixing existing Flash content written before the advent of Flash MX is likely to be more challenging.

Choosing how to make content in a Flash resources screen-reader accessible depends on entirely on the resource and its intended purpose, and the likely success that your solution will allow a blind person to achieve the intended experience offered by the resource. It is eminently possible that you may decide that this is not possible by making the Flash resource directly accessible, and in such a case a self-voicing Flash movie or even HTML alternative may be the appropriate choice.

Before you continue

The advice on this page helps you avoid introducing a specific accessibility barrier, but it's not a magic formula. To avoid attempting to follow a technical solution that is not appropriate to the resource and its intended purpose, you need to know the context in which the multimedia resource is being used:

1. The purpose or aim of the multimedia resource in question, and whether it is being used to supplement another resource in the learning environment, or whether its use is required by students.
2. The target audience, their knowledge and expectations, and the type of browsing and assistive technology that they may be using.
3. Whether the information and experiences provided by the multimedia technology are already available in an equivalent, alternative form.

For more background on this approach, see our Guide to the use of multimedia in accessible e-learning.

Technique Details

If you choose to make the content of the resource directly accessible to screen readers, you need to create your Flash in either Macromedia Flash MX or 2004, both of which offer support for Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA). This allows users of screen readers and browsers that also support MSAA to access the contents of a Flash movie, so that the screen reader is able to read the content of text elements, buttons, input text fields and certain other Flash objects.

When authoring the Flash movie, static text will be by default made accessible to the screen reader. A feature of Macromedia Flash MX and 2004, the Accessibility Panel (illustrated in Example 1), allows designers and developers to provide a text equivalent for a single element or for a group of elements within Macromedia Flash content, or even a text equivalent for the entire movie.

Example 1: the Accessibility Panel of Flash MX

You can also configure your Flash movie to test for the presence of an MSAA-compatible screen reader, using ActionScript. In this way, you can specify a more appropriate way for content to be delivered to a user accessing the movie with a screen reader.

Providing a self-voicing Flash movie will result in additional work in terms of recording a spoken soundtrack and audio equivalents for each object of the movie, but has the advantage of making the screen reader accessible to anyone using a text-to-speech device that does not support MSAA, such as reading devices used by sighted people who have difficulty reading onscreen text. If you do choose this option, make sure that screen reader users are informed of this in advance of accessing the Flash resource, so that they can silence their screen reading technology - or, indeed, silence the movie if they would prefer.

Note also that for a Flash movie to be usable by a screen-reader user, it will also require to be keyboard operable - see How to optimise for keyboard access - in Flash.

Testing

Despite significant efforts made by Macromedia to enhance Flash accessibility, be aware that there are still limitations in its availability and implementation. For a start, Flash content is only screen reader accessible if a user has Flash Player 6 or more recent, and a screen reader and browser that support MSAA (currently either recent JAWS or Window Eyes, running with Internet Explorer, though be aware that there are apparent problems with versions 5 and 6 of JAWS). In practice, this currently limits Flash accessibility to Windows-based screen reading setups.

It is important that the movie is accessed using as many combinations of screen reader,browser and Flash Player as possible, so that you can establish whether the movie is comprehensible when listened to. In particular, only by listening to the movie will you establish whether the alternative text supplied for a specific object is indeed appropriate and logical in the context of the movie. You might find that you would be better placed providing a self-voicing movie by recording and adding audio as part of the movie, or even providing an HTML alternative to the movie, if it is likely to be impossible making accessible the experience intended to be provided by the movie. As ever, seeking feedback from screen reader users would also be worthwhile.