Skills for Access

Why this is important

A mouse is often assumed as being essential to control and interact with a multimedia resource. Yet some people may have difficulty using a mouse, or may be unable to use a mouse and thus use an alternative input device such as a switching device, joystick or gesture-recognition device. Others may be using a device that does not have a mouse, or are using a mouse that doesn't work very well. So to be optimally accessible, Director/Shockwave multimedia interfaces need to be operable without relying on the use of a mouse as an input device.

General Principles

Assuming there is no pedagogic need to assess a user's skill with a mouse or other pointing device, the basic aim is to make sure that the Director/Shockwave interface can be operated by the keyboard. If the keyboard can be used, it is almost certain that alternative switch-based input devices will work as well. (This is, of course, also particularly important if the interface will be accessed through a touch screen interface or a button operated public access terminal.)

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

Shockwave player does not automatically provide you with keyboard controls. To make your projector or Shockwave movie keyboard-accessible, this has to be considered during programming/authoring the software. There are various ways of building keyboard accessibility into the application. The arguably easiest way is to apply the drag-and-drop accessibility behaviours built into Macromedia Director (for details see External Links section). Another option would be to write custom Lingo code which analyses the information obtained from key presses on the keyboard and then carries out a specific function depending on the result of the analysis. To do this the developer/author needs to have some knowledge of the Lingo programming language.

Example 1 is a screenshot taken from one of the pages of a Shockwave resource designed for a group of Somalian women who did not have computer literacy skills and were therefore unable to use a mouse. For this reason certain character keys on the keyboard were 'painted' in certain colours. To move to the previous or next screen, users pressed the red or green key on the keyboard. To receive feedback on how healthy each of the drinks are, users pressed the yellow, purple, blue or other key on the keyboard. This plays the appropriate audible feedback, and there is also a visual clue in the centre of the screen. The Somali Health Project runs as a Director projector.

Example 1: Screenshot of Somali CD-Rom Shockwave resource - main menu

Example 2 is an interactive Shockwave example designed to allow keyboard access to navigation options and the display of specific information. When selected, information about each project is shown in the space below the four project options. In this example, the Accessibility Item and Accessibility Group Order behaviours were used to create the tabbing functionality in addition to the normal mouse navigation.

Example 2: Play the Shockwave movie.

Example 3 is a screenshot showing the score of the Director source file and the Property Inspector with the settings for the Accessibility Group Order behaviour of the Shockwave resource shown in Example 2.

Example 3: Screenshot showing the score of Director source file

The tabbing order of the various elements on the screen is very important. It needs to be set up in a clear and logical way so as not to confuse the user. Example 3 shows that the second image has the tab order of '2'. (The first image has a tab order of '1', the third of '3' etc.)

Testing

There is a wide range of alternative input devices that people with moderate to severe physical impairments may use, and it is likely to be impractical to be able to test your resource with any more than a few such devices. If you can find someone to navigate your resource using an alternative input device, then great, but the most basic test is to navigate the resource using your keyboard - unplug the mouse to resist any temptation!