This follows Drew McLellan's post on the WASP blog on Obstacles to Accessible Flash which highlights current accessibility issues that Flash is affected by due to browser limitations and other reasons, both Adobe-related and non-Adobe-related.
There is today more communication and understanding between the Flash and Web Standards communities than ever before. I've been trying to do my tiny little bit by actively encouraging this communication whenever possible and I've been very fortunate to have had the invaluable support of my friends Andy Budd, Jeremy Keith, Mike Davies, Christian Heilmann, Drew McLellan, Tom Croucher, Steve Webster, Pete Barr-Watson, Heather Ford, Lawrence Lessig, John Davey and many others in both the Flash and Web Standards communities.
I feel that it's essential that we keep this communication going and one way to do this is to get Flash people to speak at non-Flash events like d.construct and have Web Standards people speak at Flash events (Jeremy Keith at last year's Flash on the Beach and, this week, at Flash Brighton).
It feels like we've come a long way in the last two or three years in dispelling myths and misinformation about Flash and in getting Flash developers exposed to web standards and concepts such as progressive enhancement. There's also a lot more we can do and it's essential that we keep this momentum going.
Posts like Mike's belong in the annals of history. Stating, as Mike does, that Flash "is the bane of the Internet, and it needs to go away" is in no way constructive. In fact, it runs contrary to all the positive work that we've been trying to do in both the Flash and Web Standards communities in the last few years.
Flash is not going away. In fact, the Flash platform has more legitimacy today than it ever has ever had. And it's wonderful to see the Web Standards community engaging with us and working with us. Together, we can help educate developers on how to create standards-compliant Flash and work to improve the accessibility of Flash. And that's a very Good Thing for us all! 
The The times they are a-changin’ article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
ooops…. I didn’t want the Flash Sucks piece to be the central part of my post - it was just an indication that misinformation is still there but not as prevalent, and mainly down to mere personal opinion rather than fact - hence highlighting Steve Webster’s comment in particular because its a fair reflection of the failures of both Flash and Ajax development.
But the core points of both our posts are clear - there’s great work and progress happening because of HTML/CSS based developers working with and alongside Flash developers.
I’ll note that the argument of Flash Sucks is based on a piece Jakob Nielsen wrote in 2000, one he himself largely refuted a year later.
To be honest, my gut feeling is that building an accessible Rich Internet Application is going to be easier with Flash than it is with the current range of Ajax techniques. Accessible Ajax in a practical sense is very much in its infancy. Much of this is because with Flash you have to do a little extra to make sure that its accessible. With HTML and CSS its largely there, and we Ajax developers are expecting the same effort of “don’t do stupid things” will be enough to have an accessible Ajax application. Its a developer mindset, the accessible Ajax developer has to start thinking like an accessible Flash developer - the accessible Flash developer is already there.
I will not be surprised if some of the leap-forwards in accessibility techniques come from, or have been previously used, in Flash applications.
I’d point to Niqui’s Flash colour filter technique for alleviating colour-contrast issues (for both colour-blind and dyslexic visitors) as a recent example of where Flash developers can teach us web developers how to solve particular accessibility problems. Even larger than that - Niqui’s demonstration should be taken up by browser manufacturers as a way of implementing browser-based colour filtering. I need to blog that example in particular.
Oh, happy plus-1000 posts!
Mike
The Google Webmaster Central blog had a good piece on this issue recently:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/07/best-uses-of-flash.html
Flash has its place, and steps can be taken to make it accessible, but it is just another browser plugin. When used to add “rich content” to web pages, it’s great. When used to try and completely replace web pages, it’s crap.
how about “Flash used badly sucks”, we can all agree on that!
I like flash, and I spend most of time writing my best semantic, accessible degradable XHTML/JavaScript. I’m in the middle of an email conversations with a clients “technical advisor” trying to explain to them how to use flash properly and it is a struggle.
Perhaps Adobe could do more to promote nicer ways of using it, but it wouldn’t be good business practice since the right way to use it is sparingly.
Yes , you are right, ‘Flash is not going away’. We just need to make all the developers, designers and also ID’s aware that flash can be made accessible.
After working on flash and accessibility for almost 2 years now, I feel we can do it easily if we are really willing to do it. It’s pretty easy (revolving in certain properties of accessibility) but damn painful if our approach is wrong while implementing accessibility in flash.
peace, veiky