No wonder advertisers fail so much at accessibility

[codeman38]

This is absolutely brilliant:

Digital Agencies of the Future

For those who can't see the images, it's a bunch of screenshots of advertising agency sites as viewed in Mobile Safari with no available Flash plugin. Almost all of them, with very few exceptions, say something to the effect of "You must have Flash to view this site." Some of them didn't even change the basic boilerplate text in their Flash detection script. And some of them don't even try to detect it, and just show one big missing plugin icon.

(And it's not just mobile browsers where this is an issue. Flash is only accessible on Windows, when it's even accessible in the first place-- there's no screen reader support built into the plugin on Mac or Linux. And the sites look just as barren on my spare PowerPC Linux box, as Adobe simply does not make a plugin for that processor/OS combination.)

Comments

[ladygzb.livejournal.com]

I tend to assume that if something is Flash-only, they just don't need me as a view/customer. I have Flash and animated gifs disabled by default. I do have the option of turning them on if I *really* need to see whatever they are, I suppose, but life is so much easier if I simply assume that "flash blocked here" part of the site just doesn't exist.

Occasionally I do, in fact, need something that's Flash-only. Generally I email or call instead, and I tend to offer a complaint about the Flash-only at the same time.

[codeman38]

Yeah, I run FlashBlock and disable animated GIFs as well.

What I "love" is when the company's contact info is only viewable through the Flash app. and of course there's no easy way to find an email address. And some things just do not lend themselves well to being given over the phone, like restaurant menus... (Particularly with my horrific auditory memory. I mean, seriously, I should start using the relay service for all important calls. But I digress.)

[ex_rising236]

Relay, despite that everyone on the other end always whinges a little, is my hero. Because once I get into areas with background noise, I can't understand a thing if I'm actually talking on the phone.

[sophie]

Running Flashblock isn't quite the same as disabling Flash; websites that use detection code to find if you're running Flash will (generally) haver the test pass even if you're running Flashblock - although depending on the way they test for it, sometimes it won't be detected. If the site in question is one that's even *partially* accessible in its Flash site without needing Flash (which does sometimes happen) then it's obviously better to be taken there anyway rather than having a detection fail and no way to even get there.

[codeman38]

I wish there were some easy way to just enable and disable the Flash plugin at a single click, rather than putting a placeholder like Flashblock does, to be honest.

[attie]

And some of them don't even try to detect it, and just show one big missing plugin icon.

Pet peeve: I actually prefer sites that don't detect flash. I use a flash blocker, which means I can click on content I want to run and not have distracting flashy ads blinking on the sides/corners. However, whenever some site uses a flash detection script, I get "please install flash" instead of the clickable placeholder. Then I have to go authorize the whole page, and potentially a myriad of flash elements that I don't want to see, just to get the one I want.

I believe there is an HTML attribute that allows you to indicate the plugin needed to view the content of the tag. Why not use this instead of detection scripts? (Serious question - I don't work in a web-related domain, all I have to go on is my own experience as a user.)

[codeman38]

One problem is that although the HTML tag can specify a plugin to use, it can't detect a version - so if there's a Flash app that requires version 10 and all you have is version 8, you'll just get a blank screen or a non-working interface with no indication of why.

[attie]

And a flash file doesn't have a tag indicating a version number or something, so the plugin knows when a file was made for a newer version? That seems like something a plugin should deal with internally.

Okay, so sensible never really was Adobe's approach to coding.

[codeman38]

Yeah. Really, there is just so much wrong with Flash.