508 Accessibility within Adobe Muse

[lickteig]

Hey....needing to know if and when Adobe Muse will have Accessibility option like Flash has had for years now.  We have a client who only wants to deal with HTML 5 and Muse to me is the only software out there for designers.  Animate create HTML Canvas which from everything I have read is NOT at this point and accessible option.  There are ways to make Muse work about 75% of the way which means having to add ARIA tags to the HTML after exported from Muse.  This is a solution but not obviously as great as being able to do everything from Muse.  Is this option coming???

[Ussnorway · Accepted solution]

Flash is not an internet standard and no one (outside Adobe employees) will put up with it for web design...

ARIA tags are an ok idea in principle but they didn't take off because they don't really work. If your client wants pure html5 | ajax then use Adobe Edge instead of Animate CC but as for Muse my advice is don't hold your breath.

[studio9400]

I thought Adobe Edge was gone?  I don't see it listed within my CC subscription.  I played around with it a couple years ago and found that they did have an Accessibility panel like Flash.  Right about that time though it seemed like they went away from it by blending it with the new version of Flash...Animate.  Dani Beaumont from Adobe....I just watched one of your Muse training videos on Lynda.com. Do you have any plans to add Accessibility to Muse?  I find it hard to believe that this is not here already or in the works since this program is aimed at designers vs developers.  I am a designer.  We can add "tabindex = 1" for example to the exported HTML code from Muse but if we need to edit the Muse file again then of course all of that custom HTML code is gone.  Accessibility options truly need to be added to Muse and soon. Select a button or a text element and give it a tab order.....that's it.

[Ussnorway]

studio9400 wrote:

I thought Adobe Edge was gone? I don't see it listed within my CC subscription. I played around with it a couple years ago and found that they did have an Accessibility panel like Flash.

its still there in your cc app for down load hidden under the old versions tab

[keyarts70]

Adobe Edge CC is no longer part of my CC suite.  Hasn't bee for quite a while.  Having used Muse to a capacity where 508 accessibility was needed, it's as STUDIO9400 stated.  We had to attach ARIA tags to the Muse output html files that never worked 100% of the time.  And usually needed a developer's help to get it working completely.  Muse continues to make great improvements to this software by reducing the amount of extraneous code generated by the program on export to html.  But they do really need to get a better system implemented for accessibility.  I hate having to redo my 508 tags every time I have to make a change in Muse and then re-export.

[Ussnorway]

keyarts70  wrote

Adobe Edge CC is no longer part of my CC suite. 

its still there Adobe just changed where the hiding place is... we agree to disagree about the development of ARIA tags

[keyarts70]

Apologies, I found Edge after your post instructions and have installed it.  As for ARIA tags, what else can we use if the way we check for accessibility is the JAWS screen reader?  I mean, I don't like it either but it's kind of industry standard for screen reading (at least in my company where we deal with the VA on a regular basis).  If Edge is no longer being developed and Muse is continuing to gain popularity with it's community of widget developers, why shouldn't we expect the accessibility features of Muse to improve?  

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

Update, Jan 2020:

Adobe will stop supporting Adobe Flash on December 31, 2020. That means it's a dead technology and we shouldn't use it. (And many of us believe no one should have ever used it, but that's for another discussion.)

• Here's information from Microsoft about Flash support in its browsers: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4520411/adobe-flash-end-of-support 

ARIA for accessible HTML content is a dissappointing mess.

• It is a poorly written standard that is difficult to implement. It is "over-engineered."
• So many of our AT (assistive technologies) do not correctly process ARIA, so you'll have different results between JAWS vs. NVDA vs. Apple Voice Over vs. any other AT.
• Surveys show that most users don't even know what ARIA is, let alone how to use the landmarks.
• When it was first developed, ARIA was intended to be a temporary bandaid to help make websites more accessible. How it eventually became a requirement 15-20 years later has me gob-smacked.
• At this time (Jan 2020), just use the basic ARIA landmarks for headers, footers, and main content. Use standard HTML <Tags> to markup the actual content (called semantic markup). Add Skip-Nav hyperlinks that allow users to skip over repeated navigation and go directly to the main content. And pay attention to the reading order of all the elements on your page (test this by viewing the page without the CSS).
• KISS  -- Keep it simple, sweetie!  ARIA is overkill, isn't as useful as it should be, and takes way too much time/money to deploy...with little payback.
• Here's a good public discussion about this topic at the WebAIM community forum: https://webaim.org/discussion/mail_message?id=41420  Note the comments from Birkir R. Gunnarsson, one of the accessibility industry's most knowledgeable and practical experts.

Best objective resource for web accessibility is the WebAIM forum:

• Introduction for HTML accessibility at https://webaim.org/resources/ 
• Community forum at https://webaim.org/community/ 

Hope this helps guide you.

[Nancy OShea]

Thanks for those words of wisdom, Bevi.  I agree with most of what you say.  But unfortunately, you're preaching to a brick wall in the Muse forum.  Sadly, the people who are attracted to Muse don't work with code.

Muse's machine generated code doesn't support 508 accessibility, ARIA roles or even basic HTML5 semantic tags like <header>, <nav>, <footer>, <main>, etc... . So if someone needs to create a WCAG compliant website, Muse is the last tool in the world they should use.  Maybe that's partly why Muse is End of Life now.

[Ussnorway]

The road to hell is paved with good intentions... all these tag systems are put together by 'well meaning' people with little to zero understanding of code so its little wonder that no body gives a stuff what the standard says 'should' happen when XYZ reader comes to the site

in the sort term = Muse is dead and Adobe has walked away from web design as too hard... maybe they are right to do so but its done now in any case