Flash Site Design - Making existing Flash movies accessible

Author

Making existing Flash movies accessible

SweetEngineer

2006-08-29, 6:27 pm

We have Flash movies created for a virtual tour of a home. The developer
assumed the movies would be viewed from a CD. We now have put the movies on a
web site but the site doesn't pass accessibility standards because we have not
added information to describe the movies. We don't have the .fla files. Is
there a way to add text descriptions to the .swf files to make the visitor
using assistive technologies aware of what the movies are showing on each page?
One of the pages containing a video is located at:
http://estanciadelosmayo.com/owner/living_rm_tour.html

Thanks so much for your help!
Carol

-->dan mode

2006-08-29, 6:27 pm

Have a read of this:
http://www.adobe.com/macromedia/acc.../flash/faq.html

Adobe has a little SDK called "Flash Search Engine SDK".
http://www.adobe.com/licensing/developer/

Using the FSE SDK, we can get the text output from the swf and see what the
extractable text of any SWF file looks like.

--

Dan Mode
--> Adobe Community Expert
*Flash Helps* http://www.smithmediafusion.com/blog/?cat=11
*THE online Radio* http://www.tornadostream.com
*Must Read* http://www.smithmediafusion.com/blog

"SweetEngineer" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:ed1jlp$k3m$1@forums.macromedia.com...
> We have Flash movies created for a virtual tour of a home. The developer
> assumed the movies would be viewed from a CD. We now have put the movies
> on a
> web site but the site doesn't pass accessibility standards because we have
> not
> added information to describe the movies. We don't have the .fla files. Is
> there a way to add text descriptions to the .swf files to make the visitor
> using assistive technologies aware of what the movies are showing on each
> page?
> One of the pages containing a video is located at:
> http://estanciadelosmayo.com/owner/living_rm_tour.html
>
> Thanks so much for your help!
> Carol
>

SweetEngineer

2006-08-30, 3:27 am

Thanks for your feedback. I noticed there is a link to the Macromedia Flash
Accessibility Resource Center that doesn't work. Do you know the correct link
to that page? Thanks again. I'll investigate further how I can augment the swf
files.

David Stiller

2006-08-30, 6:26 pm

SweetEngineer,

> Thanks for your feedback. I noticed there is a link to
> the Macromedia Flash Accessibility Resource Center
> that doesn't work. Do you know the correct link to
> that page?

I entered "Flash Accessibility Resource Center" into Google and came up
with a useful URL -- including a Flash accessibility whitepaper -- in 0.21
seconds.

David
stiller@quip.net