I’m very impressed with Xavier’s new site. And there’s more information about the “updated” homepage from the Web Services Department at Xavier. (”Updated” is a much safer term than “redesigned”, don’t you think? Nice choice of words, you savvy Xavier web people)
In particular, I keyed in on the explanation for the big flash feature spot. They explain it this way:
The current “Sights & Sounds” tab, as well as the rotating factoids, will be combined into an interactive Flash area highlighting the many great initiatives at Xavier, including items such as current construction, enrollment dates, deadlines and events, and alumni programs; all with a high-tech twist that include videos, photo galleries and other features.
I’m liking what they’ve done. Very nice. But is it just me, or is everybody jumping on the “let’s put a big flash feature on the top of our university homepage and expend gigantic amounts of development effort to make it conform to accessibility requirements” bandwagon?
And I have absolutely no room to talk. Whatsoever. None. Because I’ve been noodling with a gigantic real estate-hogging homepage flash feature myself. Why? Because it’s cool. And I’m a SlideshowPro maverick. And that first round of accessibility testing? It hurt. It hurt bad. And I’m still in recovery mode.
Screenreaders don’t like flash, and I’ve invested huge amounts of time to try and satisfy the requirements of a flash (SlideshowPro) feature spot being “cool” and compliant at the same time. It ain’t easy folks. And there are quite a few universities deploying homepage flash content that isn’t accessible. And you know who you are.
Anyway, I’m delving into ways of displaying (and hiding) alternate content, using swfobject, and maybe even forgoing the use of SlideshowPro Director for the older SlideshowPro + XML method, and using the xml file not only to control the slideshow but generate alternate content.
It’s a HUGE, all-consuming effort. All for a little bit of flashy homepage glamor. It’s like going out and buying an expensive luxury item. You know you can’t afford it, but you’re dead set on doing it anyway, even if it creates more problems than it solves.
In the end, it’s going to be worth it. That’s what I keep telling myself anyway. I welcome any suggestions or pearls of wisdom or experience you may have to offer. I think everybody in university web development experiences the same conflict between being fancy and being compliant.
Additional Reading:
Multimedia on Mizzou-Wire
Josh Nichols goes into great detail on efforts to create accessible multimedia. Bookmark it.
Embed Flash or Die Trying
“The most common methods vary along several key dimensions, including standards-compliance, user-friendliness, and universal support. Some methods make it easy to provide alternative content, others enable auto-activation of Flash content, while others feature plugin-detection functionality. In an attempt to round-up the myriad techniques, this article presents nine of the most useful, practical, and popular methods for embedding Flash content.”
Section508 Requirements for “Web-based intranet and internet information and applications”
A list of rules. Build websites for a state university? These rules apply to YOU.
August 18th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
This topic is always on my mind. Everyone wants their homepage to be flash oriented (and I’m a huge fan of SSP myself.) Personally, I feel Xavier is a bit too heavy on flash, as the moving parts are a bit distracting to me (especially the scroller on the bottom.)
The question that always comes to my mind, though, is what the legal and ethical obligations are for showing pictures. If a slideshow doesn’t really show content, but is purely a piece of visual eye candy, is there a true obligation to make it fully accessible? Is there a value for non-sighted users being able to read that there is a photo of a smiling undergraduate student sitting on a park bench on the website?
August 19th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
I’ve thought about this problem, too, and the one solution that is better for most people in most cases is progressive enhancement.
Strip your markup to basic elements (not including embed and param because those are plagued with cross-browser problems). Mark up mp3, mov, flv and all media with simple anchor elements and a simple text description, perhaps in an unordered list. Then use your favorite JavaScript media script to replace the container with the enhanced SWF. You mentioned SWFObject; jQuery’s media plugin and Flash plugin are also good bets. An example that I created: http://www2.ljworld.com/news/champions2008/ (check out the markup in the video area).
The edge case is how many will have JavaScript enabled but NOT Flash: Your elements might look shabby without the proper style, but at least it’s accessible for the blind; it might need proper style for contrast. If your SWFs can read in external variables from the markup (like calling on an XML file or mp3 file), let that markup be the fall back and avoid using the lame “Please install Adobe Flash” message. How are iPhone users going to feel about that message?
As for closed captions, CC for Flash (http://ncam.wgbh.org/webaccess/ccforflash/) is all right, and a transcript of that can certainly be inserted into the element that is being replaced with Flash.
I’m curious about what you meant by “using the xml file not only to control the slideshow but generate alternate content.” I know you can read XML with jQuery’s Ajax requests, but that would require JavaScript being enabled, and thus if it was, there’s no reason not to go whole hog and insert Flash into the DOM with JavaScript and use the XML file with Flash anyway.
Like I said earlier, to be accessible (generally speaking) is to have the server put content into the page before it gets served and to mark it up with the appropriate elements.
August 19th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
I’m floored. These are some great insights. Thanks for taking the time to share.
August 26th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
One more thing to consider when developing something in Flash is: “Does this need to be Flash?”
I find that probably 90% of the Flash applications used on various Web sites really don’t need to be Flash. Rather, the Web developer simply wanted to use Flash, because the thought of trying to write a similar application in more accessible constructs simply did not appeal to them.
For instance, there is very little in that slide show that could not have been accomplished using AJAX (which, provided you program it correctly, still degrades without any detrimental effects).
Anything that couldn’t have been accomplished using good old-fashioned AJAX probably isn’t really adding that much to the slide show anyway.
Xavier’s new Web site is also an astounding example of why you need to develop your sites to degrade properly. Try visiting their new site with javascript disabled. I think you’ll actually be surprised.
When I disabled javascript on their home page, I found that the slide show did not display at all (in fact, it told me that I didn’t have Flash installed!?!?) and the news scroller area near the bottom-left of the page was no longer contained. Rather, it just overflowed all the way down the rest of the page, weaving in and out from behind other elements on the page. Couldn’t they just have put that inside of an “overflow: auto” container and removed the overflow style parameter with javascript once the page loaded?
BTW - Regarding closed captioning/subtitles for Flash videos, Camtasia Studio does a decent job with that.
Thanks for sharing.
August 28th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
[...] Biography Multimedia/Flash Screenreader Tango Aug [...]
August 29th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Thanks for the link to my blog post!
I have to agree with using JavaScript over Flash where possible. It degrades nicely and, if you do it right, is very accessible. When I wrote that post about Flash and multimedia, my office decided on Slideshow Pro because we didn’t have anyone on staff who could program. Now, that we have a couple of programmers, we can begin to move away from pre-fab solutions and create something that is exactly what we need and still keep accessibility a priority.
August 29th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Must be nice to have those programmers on the bus, Josh. You’re very right. You don’t HAVE to use flash. Just a few days ago I found this great little jQuery / CSS slideshow that I’m considering using instead of flash/slideshowpro. It performs nicely, and I’ve been looking hard at how the content is presented with javascript off. Here’s the demo
September 16th, 2008 at 12:25 am
[...] Multimedia/Flash Screenreader Tango [...]
September 20th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
[...] interesting discussion on this subject was started over at CollegeWebGuy.com. Since then, I’ve come across even more examples, [...]