Flash Audio

Accessible Flash Streaming Audio

by Daryl Croke

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Accessibility techniques

The rest of the article will focus on building a Flash audio console that is accessible to a user browsing with a screen reader. Although Flash is not fully accessible it is important to discuss its potential for delivering audio content for the vision impaired. One, Flash is becoming a popular method for streaming audio. Two, it has a greater interactive potential than simply just playing and stopping audio. To cater for users who can’t access Flash, I would advocate also placing a link to the audio file. Non-Flash users could then use their preferred players to access the audio.

View an example of an accessible Flash console.
Download the example code (263k ZIP archive).

Users browsing with a Screen Reader don’t use a mouse to navigate. Instead, they most commonly click the tab key to jump to links in a HTML page. When a user wants to activate a link they press the return key.

The first step in making a SWF accessible is to label all control buttons using the accessibility window in Flash MX. When the screen reader tabs over a button it reads the label and description given in the accessibility window. To call Flash Accessibility select an object and select Window > Accessibility a window such as the one below will open. The following example is the Accessibility labels attached to a stop button.

Accessibility Window

For more information about Flash MX accessible content read the Flash help file, Using Flash > Creating Accessible Content. Macromedia has a Flash Accessibility Web page, http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/accessibility/features/flash/.

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