We do a lot of user testing with screen reader users, and this is the basis for most of my contributions to this list. Flash support has increased over the last few years so the user experience depends both on the make of screen reader and the version. The user experience can be good if the designer has taken the appropriate steps to label buttons and correct the tab sequence. However, this does not happen by default, and most developers do not take the necessary measures so links are often read as "button one", "button two" etc. Often some content is not read, some links are not on the tab sequence and some events are not exposed to the screen reader. Also Flash movies are made in layers. It is common for them to be designed such that only the top layer is clickable at certain times (e.g. modal dialogs), but screen readers can often programmatically access content in layers that should not be accessible. This can be extremely confusing. The bottom line is that Flash can be reasonably accessible but usually isn't and it can never approach the accessibility of HTML. Screen readers are available at most price points from free up to nearly $2000. I am currently evaluating several to determine how they differ, and have nearly finished evaluating Fire Vox, which is a free extension for Firefox. Surprisingly, the user experience is very different from JAWS and in my opinion it needs a lot of work to be considered a viable option. In fact it makes you appreciate how good JAWS is. I will be publishing the results on our website but that won't be for a couple of months yet. Steve
_____ From: listdad@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mihael Zadravec Sent: 10 January 2007 07:52 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] my world, my country.. :( Hello Steve! Do you have any information about screen reader users expirience with flash elements like navigation or others? Is the flash content ok with them or is it not? I also think that 1,000 $ is too much for a software like screen reader... Becasue of its nature, this software should be more reachable to its audience.. Mihael ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *******************************************************************
