[osflash] Introducing FlashAid: Using Flash to make Ajax more accessible

[Aral Balkan]

Hi everyone,

We were having a barbeque on the beach on Saturday night when Jeremy 
Keith <http://adactio.com/> from Clearleft <http://clearleft.com/> told 
us of an idea he had had for improving accessibility in Ajax 
applications by exposing, from a Flash application, the ability to 
detect whether accessibility features are installed on the user's 
computer. I had taken this feature for granted and didn't realize that 
the Ajax world was forced to live without it. Jeremy was surprised that 
no one had implemented this yet and we agreed that it was not rocket 
science by any means. In fact, I got a little time today to develop it 
and the result is FlashAid <http://osflash.org/flashaid>, which I've 
released under the open source MIT license on OSFlash <http://osflash.org>!

FlashAid <http://osflash.org/flashaid> allows JavaScript to check if 
accessibility features exist on the user's computer by using a hidden (1 
pixel x 1 pixel) Flash application. It requires Flash 8 and should be 
compatible with every browser supported by ExternalInterface (for a full 
list, see the FlashAid web page <http://osflash.org/flashaid>.)

FlashAid v0.1 Preview 
<http://svn1.cvsdude.com/osflash/flashaid/release/flashaid_v0.1.zip> is 
ready for download.

This is a very early, proof-of-concept release. Please join the mailing 
list and give us feedback. It would be especially useful to hear from 
Ajax developers working on implementing accessibility in their applications.

More info on my blog post at http://aralbalkan.com/644

See the FlashAid web site <http://osflash.org/flashaid> for more 
information on FlashAid.

Aral

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