Hi WSG, This entire argument is getting a bit much. Nothing on the web is in and of itself particularly accessible. Accessibility in HTML is a joke unless you have been taught the right practices. Flash was, is, and will continue to be, primarily, a tool for delivery of rich, interactive media. To that end accessibility in flash is almost a moot point, as you're never going to be able to enable a blind person to watch a video. If the issue is text, you shouldn't be using Flash, and if you are you should be implementing it in a manner that allows for graceful degradation. I know I'm glossing the issue, but bear with me.
> Plenty of teachers, trainers, training providers, universities, TAFEs, schools, HR areas, etc are essentially lazy and can't be bothered to actually understand learning theory. This is why they 'continue to be committed to linear, push methodologies', it's easy to understand and cheep to develop. Vendor just give the market what they want. TAFEs and other para-tertiary institutions do this because that is what they are there to do. Their purpose is to give students the skills necessary to get a job and then self-perpetuate their skills. My experience of universities is that they don't do this at all. Even the less technical I.T. degrees will throw a smorgasbord of programming languages (no one goes to university to write HTML) and development methodologies at you and let you figure out which one works best for you. The result of being a good programmer is that it becomes easy to pick up ActionScript and use it well. Virtually no one writes good ActionScript. I've never taught flash to a class, so I won't speculate on its usefulness. It is in my opinion something that should be taught to I.T. students because of the ubiquity of Flash on the web. I think the argument against Flash in eLearning is flawed. It sounds more like an argument of how Flash is being used in eLearning. The issue doesn't lie with Flash itself, but with how eLearning software producers are using it. > Teacher/trainer decision makers don't love the web, possibly because they > can't control it. This is mostly untrue, teachers do love the web. Occasionally you will find a teacher whose methods are out of date, but most commonly the issues lie with course curricula. I have hope that the tide is turning. Teachers/trainers have experienced > the difficulties in creating and maintaining their content in Flash (just > try changing one image used in multiple Flash files and the difficulties > become clear) Again, this boils down to being a bad Flash developer. It took me a few seconds to think of a way to modify an image in multiple Flash files at once (without interrupting their availability to users either). > the web generation is beginning to pierce/influence decision > making levels, students/employees that love the web push to learn from > formal resources the way they informally learn from the web, plus content > changes in ever decreasing time cycles which leaves little time to build > and > rebuild Flash delivered content. I am a student. Formal resources are about the best damn thing that university has provided me. Unfortunately it's (arguably) not fun or cool to read a programming book cover to cover, so I can see why people complain. Stop using the term 'love the web'. Lots of people love the web, I'm sure, but it doesn't mean they have the first clue what's good for it. The few times I have seen Flash used well and written well it's beautiful. It's amazing. It's like having sunshine flowing through your vains. So, do you blame HTML for every poorly coded website? Do you blame Flash for every bad use of Flash? Anyway, it seems like this entire argument would be better stated as "People who hate Flash because it doesn't behave in a manner identical to HTML, and also because it isn't HTML". - James ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *******************************************************************
