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.