Section 508 – 1998
required federal agencies to make their technology accessible to people with disabilities
any group that gets money from the federal government also falls under this
ie. universities, benefits,
http://section508.gov/

Principles of accessibility (developed by WCAG)
perceivable
operable
understandable
robust

Compliance
How do you know? test, find impaired user, combination of automated tools/best judgement
Is the “spirit” of compliance good enough? alternative approaches, are they different but equal? some say yes, some say no.
For example, 2 steps vs. 10 steps? equal?

Why does it matter?
Target Lawsuit
Why? not section 508 compliant b/c of alt tags
By whom? national federation of the blind
Results? working with org to fix the site. $6 mil in damages

Assistive Technologies
Keyboard navigation
no extra requirements
tabbing/hotkeys

Screen Readers
JAWS by Freedom Scientific (has the market share)
Windows Eyes by GW Micro
VoiceOver by Apple (sounds the most like a human)
the first two work with Flex

How do Screen Readers work?
MSAA (Microsoft Active Accessibility)
API – 1997
IAccessible COM interface
4 pieces exposed by API: name, type, value, state
UIAutomation

Client is assistive technology and server is the application.

Communication is through properties (client asks server) and events (server broadcasts)

Examples:
Good?
amazon.com – tells you that there is an accessible version right away. much simpler.
dignubia.org (IE only) – read all links/buttons

Bad?
google.com – didn’t tell much from the start. one tab brought to the search box and worked well.
contrast is normally a big issue.

Flex 3 and MSAA
three main classes
Flash.accessibility.AccessibilityImplementation
Flash.accessibility.AccessibilityProperties
Flash.accessibility.Accessibility

compile with “-accessible = true”

Official Flex 4 statement
When it ships, spark components will not be accessible/nor automation. 4.1 will include this and won’t be far behind. Next version of the player will look to get past MSAA but this isn’t even in the playing stages yet. So… continuing to work on it.
- Matt Chotin

How is it supposed to work?
Flex 3
JAWS 8,9,10 with IE. JAWS scripts have to be installed.

Chain of command:
Flex SDK
Flash Player
JAWS scripts
JAWS

Official documentation says there are 28 accessible components but the data visualization is separate from this.
Do not try to retro-actively put accessibility into a Flex project –> nightmare!

Tips/Tricks
make sure scripts are installed
start tabIndex at 1
don’t be afraid of the focusThickness property (3)
get focus into Flash app (semi successfully)
possible method to force the tab to stay without app
tooltips – pay attention to name/description and the 4 values of them