

The Hands That Feed - zdw
http://www.hofstader.com/node/10

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zdw
Nearly everything stated in this also applies to Adobe Flash, which has a
horrible accessibility track record.

Apple did the blind a huge favor by not supporting Flash in iOS.

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BillPosters
@zdw, I hope you're not suggesting that native iOS apps have better
accessibility than Flash? That's not the case. Flash is way out in front of
native apps for accessibility.

Good closed caption support via external file or cue points, strong keyboard
control, mouse pointer/cursor appearance manipulation, versatile multi-channel
audio.

Apple did no favors by excluding Flash from Safari. When a website contains
Flash, it's in everyone's interest, including blind users, that the Flash
object is loaded successfully if the user wishes it so. That should be
obvious.

Check the Adobe site for "Flash accessibility design guidelines".

Screen reader technology is evolving too remember. Of course there would need
to be capabilities added to iOS Safari, such as screen reader plugin. But that
the Flash accessibility problem has been addressed on desktop now, but no one
seems to have noticed!

"When a screen reader encounters content created with Flash, it loads the
current state of the movie and notifies the user. With the Window-Eyes screen
reader, the user hears, "Loading…load done." Once a piece of content has been
read, the screen reader moves on to read other parts of the content and the
rest of the page."

"Adobe worked with GW Micro to create a Halt Flash Events keystroke
(Alt+Shift+M) for the Window-Eyes screen reader. This keystroke allows a
screen reader user to suspend Flash notifications on the page. Pressing the
keystroke again allows the user to resume Flash notifications..."

