Monday, August 11, 2008

Flash Component Topics - Accessibility and components

A growing requirement for web content is that it should be accessible; that is, usable for people with a variety of disabilities. Visual content in Flash applications can be made accessible to the visually impaired with the use of screen reader software, which provides a spoken audio description of the contents of the screen.

When a component is created, the author can write ActionScript that enables communication between the component and a screen reader. When a developer uses that component to build an application in Flash, the developer uses the Accessibility panel to configure each component instance.

Most components built by Macromedia are designed for accessibility. To find out whether a component is accessible, see its entry in the Components Language Reference. When you’re building an application in Flash, you’ll need to add one line of code for each component (mx.accessibility.ComponentNameAccImpl.enableAccessibility();), and set the accessibility parameters in the Accessibility panel. Accessibility for components works the same way as it works for all Flash movie clips.

Most components built by Macromedia are also navigable by the keyboard. Each component’s entry in the Components Language Reference indicates whether you can control the component with the keyboard.

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