Creating Accessible Content > Suggestions for creating effective accessibility |  |

Suggestions for creating effective accessibility

To give yourself the greatest chance of creating accessible content, you need to be aware of certain rules of thumb, and some things to avoid. These considerations can require some design compromises. Flash is primarily a visual medium, and sometimes you may need to sacrifice some of the complexity of your visual presentation in order to accommodate users of accessibility aids.

Here are some suggestions to keep in mind:

| Screen reader users will not perceive the graphics in your Flash content. If you use graphics to convey information, that information will be lost to screen reader users. Keep in mind that graphical text is a common example of this problem—if you're using a feature like Text Break Apart to animate text, the Flash Player won't be able to determine the actual text content of your movie any more. Other examples of information-carrying graphics include icons and gestural animations. You can remedy problems like this by providing names or descriptions for certain accessible objects within your movie, or for the movie as a whole. You can also add supplementary text into your movie, or shift your important information content from graphics to text.
| Consider whether a screen reader user is better off hearing about the individual objects in your movie, or simply hearing a description of the movie as a whole. If you think you can convey the meaning or message of your movie with a single phrase of text, turn off the Make Children Accessible option for your movie, and type in a suitable description. This can often simplify and clarify the experience of a screen reader user.
| Try to avoid animating the text, buttons, and input text fields in your movie. If you keep these kinds of objects stable, you reduce the chance of causing a screen reader to emit extra "chatter" that may annoy users. Also, try to avoid making your movies loop.
| Remember that sound is the most important medium for most screen reader users. Consider how the sounds in your movie, if any, will interact with the text spoken aloud by screen readers. If you have a lot of loud sound, it may be difficult for screen reader users to hear what their screen readers are saying. On the other hand, some quieter or well-placed sound can greatly enhance the experience of a visually impaired user. You can also include recorded speech in your movie, augmenting the information that a screen reader will speak.
| If you are creating an interactive movie, try to make sure that users can navigate through your movie effectively using only the keyboard. This can be an especially challenging requirement, because different screen readers may interfere in different ways with the processing of input from the keyboard—meaning that your Flash movie might not receive keystrokes as you intended. Testing with screen readers is the best option.
| Try not to present information in your movie that only lasts a short time. For example, if you have a series of scenes that show different pieces of text in rapid succession (perhaps one scene every three seconds or so), a screen reader may have a hard time keeping up with your changing content, with the result that some of your text may end up being skipped. You can resolve problems like this by adding "Next" buttons that control scene movement, or by including the full string of all of your text as a description for your entire movie.

Be sure also to look at the Flash accessibility page, which contains up-to-date information on the Flash Player, screen readers, tools, downloadable assets, and links to articles and sites from the accessibility community.