MACROMEDIA FLASH MX 2004-USING FLASH Use Manual page 361

For more information, see the Macromedia Flash Accessibility web page at
www.macromedia.com/software/Flash/productinfo/accessibility/.
Selecting names for buttons, text fields, and entire Flash applications
You can use the Accessibility panel to assign names to buttons and input text fields so that they
are identified appropriately by the screen reader. There are two ways of doing this:
•
Use the auto label feature to assign text adjacent or within the object as a label.
•
Enter a specific label in the Accessibility panel name field.
Using automatic labeling
Flash automatically gives an appropriate name to a button or input text field in your document,
as a text label that you have placed on top of, inside, or near a button or another text field. Labels
for buttons must appear within the bounding shape of the button. For the button in the
following illustration, most screen readers would first read the word button, then read the text
label Home. The user can press Return or Enter to activate the button.
A form might include an input text field where users enter their names. A static text field, with
the text Name appears next to the input text field. When Flash Player discovers such an
arrangement, it assumes that the static text object is a serving as a label for the input text field.
For example, when the following part of a form is encountered, a screen reader reads "Enter your
name here."
Static text
In the Accessibility panel, you can turn off automatic labeling if it is not appropriate for your
document. You can also turn off automatic labeling for specific objects within your document.
See "Turning off automatic labeling for an object and specifying a name" on page
Providing a name for an object
If you do not want to use automatic labeling for the entire application, you can turn it off and
provide names for the objects in the Accessibility panel. If you have automatic labeling turned on,
you can also select specific objects and provide names for the objects in the Name text box in the
Accessibility panel so that the name is used instead of the object text label.
When a button or input text field doesn't have a text label, or when the label is in a location that
Flash Player can't detect, you can specify a name for the button or text field. You can also specify a
name if the text label is near a button or text field, but you don't want that text to be used as that
object's name.
Input text field
Using Flash to enter accessibility information for screen readers
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