Simply put, adobe is supporting msaa and not the apple accessability api. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Cara Quinn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "General discussions on all topics relating to the use of Mac OS X by theblind" <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2008 9:44 PM Subject: Re: VoiceOver and Reading Flash files
Benjamin, thanks very much for the clarification. It makes perfect sense. so in the case of JFW, then, per se, what is it doing that allows it to grant access to flash content (however limited) on the web? To bring this back 'round to Mac with VO, would it be at least possible for VO to have access via Safari's DOM that a flash element even exists on a page?... I'm assuming at least this much could be a browser function?... Or have I got it wrong?... Thanks so much for your explanation.... Have an awesome evening!... Smiles, Cara :) On Jan 13, 2008, at 4:18 PM, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote: > Cara Quinn wrote: >> Actually this is something I was thinking about, and I wonder if >> it isn't really more of a Safari thing than a VO thing?... It >> seems as if Safari isn't making the flash content that it displays >> visible to VO? > > No, the Adobe Flash player plugin for Safari does not make the Flash > content visible to the Apple Accessibility API on which VoiceOver > depends. Safari has little to do with it. > >> To a degree, it does involve the flash authors making the content >> accessible in the sense of properly labeling there content, but >> other than that, it still can be a function of Safari... > > Playing Flash content can't easily be a function of Safari. The > licence for the Flash format specification is open for anyone to > read and make programs that generate Flash, but it is prohibited to > use the specification for making programs that play Flash content. > There is an open source project, Gnash, that attempts to reverse > engineer how the Flash player works, but I think Apple easily damage > their relationships with Adobe by adopting that in any form. Gnash > is, in any case, a long way from feature parity with Adobe Flash > Player, and does not implement any of its accessibility features. > It's conceivable that with a lot of development work one could > implement those features, Safari support, and VoiceOver support for > Gnash. > > But more realistically Apple has provided the tools Adobe needs to > make accessible applications. It's now up to Adobe to use them. > > -- > Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis > --- View my Online Portfolio at: http://www.onemodelplace.com/CaraQuinn
