Adobe Flex is Accessible? Show me.
My recent post on the accessibility of Adobe Flex prompted a response from Adam Lehman, an employee of Adobe. His blog post humorously titled “Is Adobe Flex Really Accessible? You bet your robot voice it is!” talks about a few aspects of Adobe Flex which he claims makes it more accessible than the alternatives. Unfortunately, the issues raised in my original post remain, for the most part, unaddressed.
Adam says on his blog:
I think where Aaron had a rough time is that most of the accessibility information on Adobe.com for Flex needs to be updated. It looks like all of the information is based off of Flex 1.5. It’s definitely something that needs to be addressed and our accessibility team is working on it. I’m also willing to bet that all the applications Aaron tested weren’t the best examples of applications designed to be accessible.
I would point out that the applications I tested were those on the above mentioned site that were specifically recommended by Adobe as examples of accessible apps. It is not clear from Adam’s post whether or not those applications are also in need of being updated. It is also not clear if the Jaws scripts (which, as you will recall, I could not get to install on either of two machines) are also slated for update, as they were not mentioned at all.
It is great that Adobe seems to be actively working towards making Adobe Flex accessible. However, “working on it”, and actually being accessible are two very different things.
Again, if I am wrong, I would love to know about it, and I will of course update this blog with any new information. However, at this point, without having actually experienced an accessible Adobe Flex application, I can not recommend it as an accessible solution, though I do hope that that will change.
Sorry for the lack of comments. I’ll keep bugging the admins and hopefully we’ll have them soon. In the meantime, please feel free to email me at cqannqonawq@ldqschuqrchq.org (removing all of the hopefully spam-bot foiling q’s.)
3 comments
I’ve been trying to get a basic Flex app up and running with JAWS. One major problem I’m seeing with Adobe Flex is that if I localize any forms by pulling in the strings from locale properties files using the resource manager, JAWS no longer reads these. So now I’m at a crossroad – localized app, or accessible app – can’t seem to have both. Please correct me if I’m wrong…
comment by Michael 375 days later
Adam,
Your infomation is truelly outdated. I agree with you about earlier version of Flex/Flash, but Flex 3 by far is the best solution for RIA. I have tried DOJO, YUI, and inhouse libraries and strategies. It was horribly complex and didn’t quite get it right. Most of our very Rich pages had to be done in 2 versions.
Flex on the other hand is a no brainer. I suspect this blog of yours has become personal and you have lost objectivity.
comment by ...Flex 3...Gumbo 438 days later
Just landed on this site looking for accessibility information about Flex. I’m not sure the last commenter understands the difference between an RIA and an accessible application. Perhaps many people are confused by this so I’d like to point out that Adam is talking about Accessibility as in “section 508 compliance” Look it up.
comment by Michael Prescott 474 days later
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