Using Flash To Enter Accessibility Information For Screen Readers - MACROMEDIA FLASH 8-USING FLASH Use Manual

Using Flash to enter accessibility
information for screen readers
Screen readers read aloud a description of the content, read text, and assist users as they
navigate through the user interfaces of traditional applications such as menus, toolbars, dialog
boxes, and input text fields.
By default, the following objects are defined as accessible in all Flash documents and are
included in the information that Flash Player provides to screen reader software:
Dynamic text
Input text fields
Buttons
Movie clips
Entire Flash applications
Flash Player automatically provides names for static and dynamic text objects, which are
simply the contents of the text. For each of these accessible objects, you can set descriptive
properties for screen readers to read aloud. You can also control how Flash Player decides
which objects to expose to screen readers—for example, you can specify that certain accessible
objects are not exposed to screen readers at all.
The Flash Accessibility panel
The Flash Accessibility panel lets you provide accessibility information to screen readers. The
Accessibility panel is a self-contained property inspector that lets you set accessibility options
for individual Flash objects or entire Flash applications.
The alternative approach is to enter accessibility information using ActionScript. See
"Creating accessibility with ActionScript" on page
If you select an object on the Stage, you can make that object accessible and then specify
options such as a name, description, keyboard shortcut, and tab index order (Flash
Professional only) for the object. For movie clips, you can specify whether child object
information is passed to the screen reader (this option is selected by default when you make an
object accessible).
With no objects selected on the Stage, you use the Accessibility panel to assign accessibility
options for an entire Flash application. You can make the entire application accessible, make
child objects accessible, have Flash label objects automatically, and give specific names and
descriptions to objects.
516 Creating Accessible Content
530.