Adobe Flash Professional CC 2014 v.13.0 User Manual
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Testing accessible content
When you test your accessible Flash Professional applications, follow these recommendations:
Download several screen readers and test your application by playing it in a browser with the screen reader enabled. Check that the screen
reader is not attempting to “talk over” places in your document where you inserted separate audio. Several screen reader applications
provide a demonstration version of the software as a free download; test as many screen readers as you can to ensure compatibility across
screen readers.
Test interactive content and verify that users can navigate your content effectively using only the keyboard. Different screen readers work in
different ways when processing input from the keyboard; your Flash Professional content might not receive keystrokes as you intended. Test
all keyboard shortcuts.
Using Flash to enter accessibility information for screen readers
Flash for screen readers and accessibility
Screen readers read aloud a description of the content, read text, and assist users as they navigate through the user interfaces of traditional
applications such as menus, toolbars, dialog boxes, and input text fields.
By default, the following objects are defined as accessible in all Flash Professional documents and are included in the information that Flash
Player provides to screen reader software:
Dynamic text
Input text fields
Buttons
Movie clips
Entire Flash Professional applications
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 Professional objects or entire Flash Professional 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 Professional application. You
can make the entire application accessible, make child objects accessible, have Flash Professional label objects automatically, and give specific
names and descriptions to objects.
All objects in Flash Professional 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 accessible 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 Professional 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.
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