JAWS - Accessibility for a custom flash application - Desktop based

Hello,

I am not sure about accessibility in a standalone application (non browser), I've never tried it but Flash is certainly accessible when used in a browser (especially Internet Explorer when it comes to screen readers). (in testing with Chrome, the keyboard accessibility works but I don't have a lot of luck with screen readers and Chrome)

Some tips on making Flash accessible:

1. Make sure when you click on the stage that the checkmarks in the accessibility panel are checked for:

     - Make movie accessible

     - Make child objects accessible (this is a big one because if you don't let it see any children, nothing you load will be read by the screen reader and you will pull your hair out trying to figure out why)

     - I leave Auto Label unchecked as I am assigning all the accessibility names myself.

2. Make sure all text on the screen is "dynamic text" not "static"

    - the screen reader will read the dynamic text AND read it in the order you set via the tab index setting (you can't do that with static text) - remember - the screen reader WILL read the static text but you 

      have no control over the order it reads it in, so go with dynamic text.

3. Make sure you set the tab order and name on EVERYTHING that you want keyboard accessible and on text that you want to control the read order of.

4. Provide a description (see step 5) of items you want read by the screen reader, buttons, movieclips, etc. (not the text as it will be read automatically). If you want something read by the screen reader but not tabbable (accessed by the keyboard) be sure to set the item like this: myMovieClip.tabEnabled = false; (this keeps it available to the screen reader and keeps the yellow rectangle from appearing to the user)

5. Provide descriptions of items using the "name" parameter in the accessibility panel. Don't use the "description" parameter. In my testing, rarely do screen readers pick up on this. (you can set all of the accessibility parameters via actionscript as well but the IDE is easy (myMovieClip.accessiblityProperties.name = "this is my movieclip";) - be sure to run Accessibility.updateProperties(); whenever you change an accessible property via script.

If you need more help with some other tips and "gotchas" let me know.  By the way, another great screen reader is NVDA from www.nvaccess.org works very well with Flash as well as Captivate (and its Free)

dave