Creating Accessible Content > About accessible objects in Flash movies |  |

About accessible objects in Flash movies

By default, the following objects are defined as accessible in all Flash movies and are included in the information that the Flash Player provides to screen reader software:

| Text
| Input text fields
| Buttons
| Movie clips
| Entire movies

Screen readers are primarily intended to help users navigate through the user interfaces of traditional applications-menus, toolbars, dialog boxes, and so on. Thus, text, buttons, and input text fields are types of objects that screen readers understand well, and that translate well to a spoken representation.

Since graphics can't easily be translated into spoken words, the Flash Player does not include individual graphic objects in the information provided, or exposed, to the screen reader. The Flash Player does include certain movie clips, especially those with descriptions that you provide. In addition, Flash Player includes the Flash movie itself in the information provided to the screen reader (even if the movie contains no other accessible objects).

Note: For accessibility purposes, button movie clips are considered buttons, not movie clips, by the Flash Player. See Using button events with movie clips to trigger scripts.

Flash MX allows you to provide some customization of your accessible objects, which can greatly improve the accessibility of your Flash movies for screen reader users. For each of the five kinds of accessible objects, you can set descriptive properties that will be provided to screen readers. The most important of these is the Name property, which screen readers will almost always say aloud when speaking an object. You can also control how the Flash Player decides which objects to expose to screen readers—for example, you can specify that certain accessible objects should not be exposed to screen readers at all.

Objects in Flash movies must have instance names in order for you to apply accessibility options to them. Flash provides default instance names when the instances are created. You can also apply custom names to instances. See Creating instances or Setting dynamic and input text options.

Static text blocks do not have instance names. The contents of static text blocks is exposed to screen readers by default. To apply any other accessibility options to static text, you must convert the text block to a dynamic text field.