FLASH CS3
User Guide
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Flash Player automatically provides names for static and dynamic text objects, which are the contents of the text. For
each of these accessible objects, you can set descriptive properties for screen readers to read aloud. You can also
control how Flash Player decides which objects to expose to screen readers—for example, you can specify that
certain accessible objects are not exposed to screen readers at all.
The Flash Accessibility panel
The Flash Accessibility panel (Window
> Other Panels > Accessibility) lets you provide accessibility information to
screen readers and set accessibility options for individual Flash objects or entire Flash applications.
Note:
Alternatively, use ActionScript code to enter accessibility information.
If you select an object on the Stage, you can make that object accessible and specify options and tab order for the
object. For movie clips, you can specify whether child object information is passed to the screen reader (the default
when you make an object accessible).
With no objects selected on the Stage, use the Accessibility panel to assign accessibility options for an entire Flash
application. You can make the entire application accessible, make child objects accessible, have Flash label objects
automatically, and give specific names and descriptions to objects.
All objects in Flash documents must have instance names for you to apply accessibility options to them. Create
instance names for objects in the Property inspector. The instance name is used to refer to the object in ActionScript.
The following options are available in the Accessibility panel:
Make Object Accessible
(Default) Instructs Flash Player to pass the accessibility information for an object to a screen
reader. When the option is disabled, accessibility information for the object is not passed to screen readers. Disabling
this option as you test content for accessibility can be useful because some objects might be extraneous or decorative
and making them accessible could produce confusing results in the Screen Reader. You can then apply a name
manually to the labeled object, and hide the labeling text by deselecting Make Object Accessible. When Make Object
Accessible is disabled, all other controls on the Accessibility panel are disabled.
Make Child Objects Accessible
(Movie clips only; Default) Instructs Flash Player to pass child object information to
the screen reader. Disabling this option for a movie clip causes that movie clip to appear as a simple clip in the acces-
sible object tree, even if the clip contains text, buttons, and other objects. All objects in the movie clip are then hidden
from the object tree. This option is useful mainly for hiding extraneous objects from screen readers.
Note:
If a movie clip is used as a button—it has a button event handler assigned to it, such as
onPress
or
onRelease
—
the Make Child Objects Accessible option is ignored because buttons are always treated as simple clips, and their children
are never examined, except in the case of labels.
Auto Label
Instructs Flash to automatically label objects on the Stage with the text associated with them.
Name
Specifies the object name. Screen readers identify objects by reading these names aloud. When accessible
objects don’t have specified names, a screen reader might read a generic word, such as
Button
, which can be
confusing.
Important:
Do not confuse object names specified in the Accessibility panel with instance names specified in the
Property inspector. Giving an object a name in the Accessibility panel does not give it an instance name.
Description
Lets you enter a description of the object to the screen reader. The screen reader reads this description.
Shortcut
Describes keyboard shortcuts to the user. The screen reader reads the text in this text field. Entering
keyboard shortcut text here does not create a keyboard shortcut for the selected object. You must provide Action-
Script keyboard handlers to create shortcut keys.
