I believe at this time, gw Micro is the only provider of screen access
programs which work with Flash.  At least, that was so about a month ago,
with the announcement of version 4.2 of window eyes.  Perhaps someone
using Jaws can check out a couple flash sites and see if it currently
works.

Steve
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 11:28:50 +1000
From: Steve Pattison <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: Multiple recipients of NFBnet GUI-TALK Mailing List
    <[log in to unmask]>
To: Multiple recipients of NFBnet GUI-TALK Mailing List
    <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Flash: It's Accessible



The following article can be found at
www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,51638,00.html and contains a number of
links.  I tried accessing the Zoot Culture video referred to in the
article and found it very easy to select buttons etc using Window-Eyes
4.2.  -Steve.

Flash: It's Accessible
By Lisa Delgado

2:00 a.m. April 23, 2002 PDT

Macromedia Flash designers have a reputation for creating websites that
are, well,
flashy –- but not friendly to all users.

"Most Flash designers are thinking about how to make things cool, not
how to make
things accessible (to the disabled). That's because in the past, Flash
was not good
for accessibility," said Chris MacGregor, editor of Flash portal and
e-zine
Flazoom.

People who design in Flash "consider themselves artists," said
accessibility expert
Joe Clark
. "They find the idea of a blind person wanting to (use) their site to
be slightly
weird."
However, Jason Smith defies that stereotype. In his job as a technical
director at
the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he helped to
design an educational
children's science site -- and he wanted to include some Flash-animated
games. But
he was concerned about creating barriers for deaf and blind children
using the site.
Flash
 is considered the killer animation app of the Web because it enables
designers like
Smith to create interactive animations with small-size files. However,
Flash has
been hotly criticized for its inaccessibility to people with
disabilities.
Before the release of Flash MX last month, Flash content could not be
read by screen
readers, which are used by the blind to translate information on a
computer by reading
it aloud or by sending it to a Braille display. Also, most Flash audio
content is
not accessible to the deaf because there has been no good way to create
Flash captioning.
"Using Flash at all, in Flash 5, made it inaccessible," Smith said.
"We hesitated to use Flash, but we wanted (the site) to be noticed. We
wanted it
to be bleeding-edge. We had committed to a Shockwave game, and since we
were going
in that direction, we decide to try to use Flash."
To make the site accessible to deaf children, he invented a
groundbreaking Flash
captioning tool that has subsequently been purchased by Macromedia.
Soon, the whole
Flash community will be able to use the tool, because Macromedia plans
to release
it as a free downloadable extension on the
Flash exchange
 within a month.
The tool is an ActionScript component that parses a caption XML file
and displays
the caption data within a Flash presentation. A caption XML file can be
most easily
created using software such as
MAGpie
, a free multimedia captioning application.
Smith's tool finally makes Flash captioning practical, said Andrew
Kirkpatrick, technical
project coordinator for the CPB/WGBH
National Center for Accessible Media
.
"Short of laboriously placing text on the timeline so that people could
see it at
the right time, there was no way to do Flash captioning," he said.
The advantage of the tool is that it not only saves time, it also
allows captioning
to be done by someone other than the original Flash developer, he said.
Smith hopes to use Flash MX to retrofit the site so blind children can
also use it.
Otherwise, he will need to maintain a parallel HTML version of the site
for the blind.
The disadvantage of having two versions of the site is obvious: There
are two sites
to update instead of one.
Unlike previous versions of the software, Flash MX includes an
accessibility panel
that enables designers to add names and descriptions to objects in
Flash movies –-
much like the "alt" and "longdesc" tags are used to describe images in
HTML sites.
Buttons, movie clips and entire movies can all be labeled with names
and descriptions
that are accessible to screen readers. In addition, any text in a Flash
MX movie
is automatically
accessible
.
The site,
Kinetic City
, is still under development. However, examples of captioning done with
Smith's tool
can be seen in a Flash piece on
zoot suit culture
, created by
WGBH Interactive
.
Macromedia executives Kevin Lynch and Jeremy Allaire praised the zoot
suit culture
piece for its accessibility at the keynote speech of
FlashForward
, a Flash design conference held in San Francisco early this month.
The piece was originally designed in Flash 4 as part of the companion
website for
a PBS program on the zoot suit riots sparked by racial tensions in Los
Angeles in
the early 1940s.
The WGBH Interactive Web designers used Flash MX to retrofit the zoot
suit culture
section of the site, adding screen reader accessibility. They also
added 15 video
clips on subjects such as zoot suit fashion and the big band era, and
they used Smith's
tool to caption them.
"The main impetus was to demonstrate what the new version of Flash is
capable of,
in terms of accessibility," said Peter Pinch, director of technology
for interactive
content at WGBH Interactive.
"It's very exciting to be able to reach a broader audience than in the
past -– to
think that blind, visually impaired and deaf users can enjoy our
content, as well
as everyone else," he said.
WGBH Interactive is the interactive media division of WGBH, a broadcast
company with
a long history of pioneering advances in accessibility, including
TV captioning
 and
Descriptive Video Service
. DVS describes the visual content of a TV program during gaps in the
dialogue, so
blind listeners can follow the action.
While many multimedia companies treat accessibility as an afterthought,
WGBH Interactive
has made accessibility central to its work.
Last year, the company produced the first fully accessible DVD,
Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided.
 It was the first DVD to include a "talking menu" so blind people can
access all
the DVD's features and it also includes captioning and DVS.
The zoot suit culture piece is only one of many captioned Web video
projects the
company has created, said Jon Alper, director of technology, research
and development
at WGBH Interactive.
For example, the company produced a captioned online performance of
Latin music band
Mango Blue
 on QuickTime TV. It has also captioned several
Nova Online
 videos, including
Cracking the Code of Life
, about the human genome, and
Dying to be Thin
, about eating disorders.
QuickTime, RealPlayer and Windows Media Player -- and now Flash -- all
support captioning.
When the company's Web designers retrofitted the zoot suit culture
piece, they were
able to embed captioned video directly within the Flash movie because
unlike earlier
versions of Flash, Flash MX does not require a third-party player such
as QuickTime
for short video clips.
Smith said he was glad to see his invention put to a new use. "When I
created the
tool, it was based on animation; but when I saw it works seamlessly
with video, I
was very excited that it works for both," he said.
While Smith and the designers at WGBH Interactive have been
front-runners in creating
accessible Flash sites, other Web designers are playing catch-up.
Many Web designers for U.S. federal government websites first became
concerned about
Flash's inaccessibility when Section 508 went into effect in June 2001,
said Bob
Regan, Macromedia's product manager for accessibility.
Section 508
 of the Rehabilitation Act requires that all electronic and information
technology
used by the federal government, including websites, be accessible to
people with
disabilities.
"We had a lot of people whispering, 'Is Flash going to be accessible?'
We'd say yes,
and they'd breathe a sigh of relief," Regan said.
Of course, disabled Internet users are even more relieved that Flash is
finally becoming
usable for them.
For blind people, coming to an inaccessible Flash site is like hitting
a brick wall
on the information superhighway.
Curtis Chong, director of technology for the
National Federation of the Blind
, described his frustration. "I'd go to a site and it would ask me, 'Do
you want
to install Macromedia Flash?' and I'd say 'No! I don't want anything to
do with Macromedia
because if I install Flash, I won't be able to see anything on the
bloody page.'"
Flash's screen reader accessibility has come none too soon, Chong said.
"It's late
in coming, but that doesn't take away from the fact I'm glad
(Macromedia) did it.
I wish they'd done it sooner. I hope they keep on doing it and set an
example for
the rest of the industry."
Jamie Berke, a deaf captioning advocate, applauded the development of a
Flash captioning
tool.
"I think it is great," she said. "I expect that there will be more Web
captioning
tools developed because of the impact of Section 508."
However, she warned that captioning tools aren't enough: Web designers
need education
in using them.
"Tools for captioning have long been available," she said. She lists
many captioning
tools and services on her site,
Closed Captioning Web
.
However, only a small percentage of video on the Web is captioned.
"The key is the mind-set of Web video producers, who must learn to
automatically
include captioning as part of their production process.... Producers
have to be made
aware of the existence of the tool and encouraged to use it," she said.

Regards Steve,
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MSN Messenger:  [log in to unmask]




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