Accessibility in Flex

1. Accessibility in Flex Nick Kwiatkowski

2. Accessibility in Flex • Many different types of disability that may cause issues using your applications • Visual Impairment • Blind • Color Blindness • Inability to focus • Deaf • Mental Disabilities • Other Physical Disabilities

3. Why should you care? • You/your customers don’t have the ability to use your applications • You need to comply with federal/state guidelines • You don’t want to turn off a portion of the market

4. Visual Impairments • Different impairments require different approaches. • All built-in Flex components are screen-reader capable. • The option is NOT turned on by default to broadcast screen reader events. • Option under Project Properties -> Compiler Arguments

5. Blindness • If you are trying to make your application ‘viewable’ for the blind, keep the following in mind: • Animations are pretty, but make sure they don’t communication anything important. • Screen readers often use audio to communicate to the end-user. Don’t blare audio, but if you must, have a mute button. • Check tab order! Make sure it makes sense!

6. Blindness • Make sure 100% of you application is available via the keyboard. • Make sure it is easy to navigate your application via the keyboard. • Use text fields/labels to communicate important information. Graphics CANNOT be read.

7. Color-Blindness • There are 14 common forms of color blindness. 3 are ‘fairly’ common. • Make sure to use contrasting colors for those with color blindness. Use bright colors for text and dark colors for backdrop (or visa versa) • Use a color-blindness tester (overlay to your screen / app).

8. Inability to focus • Some people are unable to see small text on the screen. • Make sure your content is legible from a descent distance from the monitor. • If you can’t see it on a projector without going to 800x600, your in trouble. • Considering making a “Make Font Bigger” option in your app. • Don’t use graphics for important info.

9. Deafness • Make sure that your only form of communication (for the app, or just events) is not via an audio plug. • Consider blinking, or a form of closed-captioning.

10. Mental Disabilities • Don’t require complex tasks to complete tasks in your application. • While drag-drop is cool, it is not always functional. • If you must grab the attention of the user, don’t flash anything to quickly. • Be careful of quick-cut videos • Don’t require the use of more than one key at a time.

11. Physical Disabilities • Don’t require the use of the mouse any actions. Always have a keyboard equivalent. • Always make the keyboard equivalent KNOWN to the end-user. • Don’t require any key-combinations to perform a task • Try your application with just a single hand, and without a mouse. How easy is it?

12. Custom Components • If you go outside the normal scope of pre-built components, you may need to consider accessibility. • {} Binding is great! It notifies screen readers! • Make sure you broadcast a “change” event when the data on the screen changes. This is bubbled up to screen readers.

13. Things to try: • The Bind usually use a program called JAWS as a screen reader. $$$$ • There are some free alternatives. None that are great • Run a color-blindness test on your app. There are films and application which will let you visualize these apps. • Get feedback!! http://rcpd.msu.edu on campus.

14. Questions?