ACCESSIBILITY

ACCESSIBILITY CONSULTING FOR MULTIMEDIA: FLASH, VIDEO

Multimedia elements are seldom completely accessible by themselves, but they can be made "more accessible" or augmented with accessible versions.

Flash elements can be reengineered to:

1. Include keyboard/keystroke commands for mouse commands
2. Text areas can be designed to be free of animation
3. Flash objects can be marked within Flash as accessible
4. Visual elements can be augmented with sound, to eliminate the need for a screen reader
5. Preferences for color, size, scalability can be programmed as user preferences
6. Buttons and target areas can be enlarged

An interactive page can also be divided into segments, presenting a mixture of multimedia and traditional media - making the page more accessible than a single, self-contained presentation. QuickTime Video can also be captioned using SMIL documents.

References: Accessibility and Macromedia Flash MX 2004