This post is out of date: See my post on the latest version of FlashAid (1.0) for up-to-date information.
We were having a barbeque on the beach on Saturday night when Jeremy Keith from Clearleft told us of an idea he had had for improving accessibility in Ajax applications by exposing, from a Flash application, the ability to detect whether accessibility features are installed on the user's computer. I had taken this feature for granted and didn't realize that the Ajax world was forced to live without it. Jeremy was surprised that no one had implemented this yet and we agreed that it was not rocket science by any means. In fact, I got a little time today to develop it and the result is FlashAid, which I've released under the open source MIT license on OSFlash!
FlashAid allows JavaScript to check if accessibility features exist on the user's computer by using a hidden (1 pixel x 1 pixel) Flash application. It requires Flash 8 and should be compatible with every browser supported by ExternalInterface (for a full list, see the FlashAid web page.)
Usage instructions
- Include the js/flashAid.js script
- Include the js/swfobject.js script (for embedding the Flash file)
- Create a
with id="flashAid". If you want alternative content to display if Flash cannot be loaded, place it into this div.
- Inside your div, call the flashAid() method and pass in the name (string) of a method that will be called for success and one for failure. The method signature of the flashAid() method is:
[js]flashAid ( successHandlerNameStr, failureHandlerNameStr, displayVersionMessageBool )[/js]
Where displayVersionMessageBool is a boolean that determines whether or not a message will be displayed in the flashAid div if the user has the wrong version of the Flash Player. (FlashAid requires Flash Player 8 and above.)
Code sample
[js]
[/js]Download FlashAid
FlashAid v0.1 Preview is ready for download.
This is a very early, proof-of-concept release. Please join the mailing list and give us feedback. It would be especially useful to hear from Ajax developers working on implementing accessibility in their applications.
See the FlashAid web site for more information on FlashAid.
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The Introducing FlashAid: Using Flash to improve accessibility in Ajax article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.Add Your Comment
- Inside your div, call the flashAid() method and pass in the name (string) of a method that will be called for success and one for failure. The method signature of the flashAid() method is:
[...] The idea. (Via Aral Blog) [...]
It’s pretty cool to see people utilising Flash within AJAX, it’s like some weird inverse paradox.
People have harked on about AJAX being the next Flash killer and now people are using Flash to help make AJAX better. GREAT!!!
Someone’s even go so far as creating an XML parser in Flash, that you can plug into youre existing AJAX projects, they call in FJAX and for some reason deem it Web 2.1, who knew?!
Oh, and I like the graphics man, very Web 6.2!!!
Jolyon
[...] Aral Balkan has gone and started an OS Flash project called FlashAid, FlashAid allows JavaScript to check if accessibility features exist on the user’s computer by using a hidden (1 pixel x 1 pixel) Flash application. [...]
Ajax accessibility…
Ajax accessibility: Aral Balkan offers a tiny SWF which can tell your JavaScript whether a working text-to-speech screenreader is installed on the current playback system. More info from his weblog: “[An idea for] improving accessibility in Ajax appli…
[...] Introducing FlashAid: Using Flash to improve accessibility in Ajax at Aral Balkan I haven’t tried this yet, but allows your AJAX app to test for accessibility features. Could be very handy. (tags: ajax accessibility) [...]
[...] Version 0.1, the previous release, was a proof-of-concept that I hacked together after a talk with Jeremy. All it did was pass the value of the System.capabilities.hasAccessibility property from Flash to JavaScript. [...]
[...] Con esto flash hace mas accesible a Ajax Introducing FlashAid [...]
Is FlashAid still open source? We are trying to download the files from the repository, and it password protected.
Heya,
The CVSDude repository for OSFlash projects shut down a while ago. If you’d like me to search for the sources (warning: they may be woefully outdated; haven’t touched them in ages), send me an email to aral at this domain.