[Wylug-help] linux and flash

[Smylers]

Shaun Laughey writes:

> Yes, accessibility works to an extent in flash. Within flashes own
> limited accessibility definitions.
> 
> As for searchable - no. 
> 
> As for accessible using alternate browsers - no. 
> 
> Overall flash is a poor substitute for nice hard text ...

Unless you make it a _literal_ substitute for nice hard text.  That is,
your HTML source contains normal Lynx- and Google-friendly text, which
can be styled with CSS and so on.  But you mark subheadings (or
pull-quotes or whatever else you want to stand out in a particular font)
with an HTML class attribute.  JavaScript then finds all such text and
substitutes it with a Flash object which renders the same text but in
your specified font:

  http://www.mikeindustries.com/sifr/

Obviously this only happens if you have both Flash and JavaScript (and
the script thinks that your browser is up to doing this cleanly);
otherwise the page is unchanged from what you'd normally get, so it
degrades nicely.

And even the HTML source is quite clean; an extra class on some elements
isn't much clutter (certainly nowhere near as bad as inline JavaScript,
or the HTML for embedding Flash objects).

I first heard of this when our web design team used it for subheadings
on our website, for example on:

  http://www.123-reg.co.uk/dedicated-server-hosting/

There are classes like sIFR_white on some of the text.  I don't have
Flash enabled and the site in no way looks defective or like it's
missing something, but fancier text is there as an enhancement for those
with browsers who support it.

Smylers