[Flashaid] Ajax and Accessibility etc.

[Aral Balkan]

Hi everyone, Richard, good to make your acquaintance :)

> We'll check out FlashAid 1.0, thanks for the link :-)

Neat!

> I'd be particularly interested to know more about the "accessibility
> research and testing by Niqui Merret" - what were you looking at, and
> what did you find?

Niqui's research was what prompted us to take Adobe's documentation  
with a grain of salt. Her testing basically revealed that the  
hasAccessibility property doesn't do much at all apart from tell you  
that you're running IE on Windows. She also helped us test on Jaws  
and Window Eyes.

This post has more info:
http://niquimerret.com/?p=49

> Specifically, a really obvious question: do you know what  
> proportion of
> screenreader users have Flash installed? Is there any danger, do you
> think, that the very people who you want to be able to detect will be
> the ones who will fall through FlashAid's net?

I  have no stats on this. Niqui, do you? I have, however, been told  
that it's not uncommon for computers to be setup with the necessary  
hardware/software for people who require screen readers. If, in fact  
Flash is not part of these default installations (not that I have  
statistics, either way), then it could be made part of it in the  
future if there is a practical gain to be had.

> Right or wrong, the BBC's Standards and Guidelines have a view on  
> this,
> I think, which is that there *is* a danger of this sort of problem.  
> For
> this reason, it says words to the effect that if you're providing an
> accessibility feature (i.e. something to help with improving
> accessibility) that uses JavaScript or Flash or another plugin, you  
> need
> to make sure you provide an alternative version that works acceptably
> without JS or Flash etc.

The main problem I see here is not having an alternative version:  
It's knowing when to use this alternative version. Actually, this is  
the core problem that FlaidAid solves.

Some JavaScript developers already know that they should be using  
progressive enhancement so that their apps degrade gracefully if  
JavaScript is on. But what if JavaScript is on? At this point, you  
can have a user with a visual impairment who is confronted by an Ajax  
site that is completely inaccessible to them. There is an alternative  
version that is displayed if JavaScript is off but the user's  
JavaScript is on so they get the inaccessible version. It's here that  
you can use FlashAid to check if the user has a screen reader active  
and turn off the JavaScript/Ajax features to provide them with the  
accessible version.

So, basically, it's an issue of practicality. Is it perfect? No. Is  
it better than what we had previously? Yes. Can it help improve the  
experience that certain disabled people will have on the web today? Yes.

Beyond that, I believe it becomes a theoretical issue and (completely  
as an outsider), it seems to me that there is already quite a lot of  
theoretical debate in the accessibility community :)

> Basically, the question is: could it cause as many problems as it
> solves? That's just a genuine question, by the way - I'm playing  
> devil's
> advocate, in a way :-)

Not really since at worst -- if they don't have Flash installed --  
they are as worse off as they were.  i.e., faced with the  
inaccessible Ajax site (if they have JS on) or with the accessible  
alternative content (if they have JS off and the site uses  
progressive enhancement.)  I do appreciate your playing devil's  
advocate, by the way,  it is very important to debate/scrutinize this  
to see if it cannot be improved upon. (The tool itself is hard to  
improve upon as it is a one trick pony but perhaps the workflow,  
documentation, message, etc., can be.)

All the best,
Aral