Using Screen Readers; Exposing Swf File Structure And Navigation - MACROMEDIA FLASH MX 2004-USING ACTIONSCRIPT IN FLASH Use Manual

Using screen readers

A screen reader is software that lets your visitors hear a description of the contents of web pages.
Text is read aloud using specially designed software. Obviously, a screen reader can only interpret
textual content. However, any descriptions that you provide for the overall SWF file, movie clips,
images, or other graphical content are also read aloud. It is important that you write descriptions
for the important images and animations so that the screen reader can also interpret these assets in
your SWF file. This is the SWF file equivalent to alt text in an HTML web page.
Freedom Scientific JAWS for Windows is one of the most common screen readers available;
version 4.5 and later is compatible with Flash Player 6 (6.0.21.0) and later. Window Eyes by GW
Micro is another one of the most commonly used screen readers, and version 4.2 and later is
supported by Flash Player 6 (6.0.21.0) and later. Accessible content is interpreted differently by
each of these screen readers, and might also behave differently on different players. You can
download free but time-limited demo software from the following websites.
•
Window Eyes from
•
JAWS for Windows from
You can also try using Connect Outloud from Freedom Scientific, which is software based on
JAWS, but it is designed only for web content. For more information, see
www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/software_connect.asp. To use Connect Outloud, you
must download a DLL for this software to work with Flash content from the following location:
www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/software_connectinter.asp.
Note: Flash Player 7 does not work with all screen reader technologies. It is up to the third-party
software provider to handle the information provided by MSAA.

Exposing SWF file structure and navigation

Because of the highly visual nature of some SWF files, the layout and navigation of the page can
be complex and difficult for screen readers to translate. An overall description of the SWF file is
important to communicate information about its structure and how to navigate through the site's
structure. You can provide this description by clicking the Stage and entering a description into
the Accessibility panel. You could also create a separate area of the site to provide this description
or overview.
Note: If you enter a description for the main SWF file, this description is read each time the SWF file
refreshes. You can avoid this redundancy by creating a separate informational page.
Inform the user about any navigational elements that change in the SWF file. Perhaps an extra
button is added, or the text on the face of a button changes, and this change is read aloud by the
screen reader. Flash Player 7 supports updating these properties using ActionScript. This means
that you can update the accessibility information in your applications if the content changes at
runtime. For more information on updating accessible properties at runtime, see "Creating
accessibility with ActionScript" in Using Flash.
www.gwmicro.com
www.freedomscientific.com
Guidelines for accessibility in Flash 131