You’re blind? You wanna use a computer? Then pay for it!

Windows Eyes, one of the most common software for blind people on the web is £169.00.

This is just outrageous. £169.00 to be allowed to surf the web when you’re visually disabled, this is outrageous. Laws exist to make so that websites and other content get accessible for everyone. But in the end, disabled people still have to pay!

(And it’s gonna be more difficult for me to run tests as well!)

About Object-Oriented Programming and accessibility for Flash…

New Flash scripting language ActionScript 3.0 has native classes for accessibility:

public class AccessibilityProperties

However, there’s already some people complaining about them.

Accessibility in focus

Here’s a website that I’ll need to check out at the end of this month: http://www.accessibilityinfocus.co.uk/.

Accessibility in Focus is actually a contest aiming to prove that accessibility doesn’t have to be dull, that you can have a good-looking AND accessible website. I hope to see loads of Flash websites and maybe get some inspiration about what is achievable in accessible design.

“Accessible Flash: Oxymoron?”

A very interesting article about accessibility for Flash: “Accessible Flash: Oxymoron?”

Ideas for the structure of an application to be accessible…

Object-Oriented Programming is just so much fun!

I was thinking, in a Flash animation, some elements have to be accessible (text and images) and some others don’t really have to (background color, ornaments…). Since almost everything is considered as almost the same in Flash (most elements in a Flash animation are movieclips), OOP can help me making a distinction between accessible elements and secondary elements.

Maybe I should have a class called “Element”, with methods such as “init”, “display” or “hide” and properties such as “x”, “y” or “transparency”. And I would have a class extending it that would be called “AccessibleElement” with properties such as “text” (this property could be considered as alternate text for images) or “rank” (if you have to render a simple layout for the content, you have to know what is the previous element and what is the next one).

The tricky thing is that some elements actually contain other elements. For example, an image gallery displays an image and at least two buttons to browse images (“previous” & “next”). I’m wondering, should I have a class called “image gallery” with an image element, a previous element and a next element or should I have the image element on one side and the buttons on the other side? These two buttons use a mechanism that could be reused for long lists of content for example.

I also thought of an abstract class called “Status” that would treat content just like web pages. This class is going to be very helpful for features such as deeplinking, bookmarking and even simple browsing, but maybe it could be included in a bigger class such as “Application” or something…

I’m wondering how I could work with Flash for so long without using OOP.

Accessibility & Usability?

What is the difference between accessibility and usability? These two notions seem to have nothing in common, however, everyone seems to mix them.

• Wikipedia: Accessibility
• Wikipedia: Usability

I’m thinking more and more of having one part of my work centered on accessibility issues for Flash, and another one on usability issues. Accessibility issues seem obvious for Flash (because the data is compiled, you can’t access it through usual screen readers, etc.) but usability issues exist as well and can be categorized in a different category. Loading animations are an example of a usability subject, it has nothing to do with accessibility.

I’ve just bought a book about Flash usability problems and solutions. We’ll see what they say!

“Flash sucks”

Jakob Nielsen’s article may be 7 years old, and Flash may have done tremendous improvements, the issue is always resurfacing:

Flash sucks by I’m Mike.

However, the article approaches something that couldn’t be notified 7 years before: the closed specification.

Flash: 99% good?

I found on the Adobe website, a book called “Flash 99% good“, an answer to Jakob Nielsen’s article. There even is a website about the book, but the book is so old (2002) that the website is not about it anymore and it’s probably not up-to-date. However, it would have been interesting to see what information and advice the book was providing, but the customer reviews on Amazon about the book are VERY bad.

To meditate

• About accessibility
  • Accessibility
• About Web accessibility
  • Web accessibility
  • Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
  • Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
  • Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (Working Draft)
• About Flash accessibility
  • Adobe Flash CS3 accessibility
  • Best Practices for Accessible Flash Design
  • Adobe Flash Accessibility web page
• Accessibility tools
  • Functional Accessibility Evaluator
  • WAVE 3.0 Accessibility Tool
  • WebAIM Simulations
  • Fangs – the screen reader emulator

It starts here…

Flash: 99% Bad by Jakob Nielsen