How to Use the Adobe Flash Accessibility Panel

Adobe Flash provides visual and motion content rather than textual content. For some users, especially those with screen reading Internet browsers, the lack of text makes Flash inaccessible and unusable. Recent versions of Adobe Flash have included an Accessibility panel that will help screen reader users gain access to your content. Read on for how to use it.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Adobe Flash

1. To bring the Accessibility panel into view, choose Window > Other panels > Accessibility.

2. In Flash CS3, the Accessibility panel offers the opportunity to select options to Make movie accessible, Make child objects accessible, Auto label, name and write a text description of each object.

3. In Flash CS4, the panel includes options to Make object accessible, Make child objects accessible, provide a name, a description and add shortcuts and tab index options if desired.

4. Always choose Make object accessible, as this option instructs the Flash player to provide the textual alternative information you include to screen readers. Also, be sure you check Make child objects accessible so that buttons, text and other material in child objects is accessible to screen readers.

5. The Name option gives the object a name. This information will help users understand what the object is and what purpose it serves in the movie. Name is comparable to the alt attribute in HTML.

6. Description is a longer description of what the object is and tells more about what is happening in the movie. It is comparable to the longdesc element in HTML.