Thinking about flash

I'm part of the team that's building the website for the 2008 digital arts bfa class @ UO - Portland.

Today we all got into a good, hour long...maybe less, but I doubt it...discussion/fight centered on the idea of having a mute button for sound effects on the site. I am, and always will be, of the opinion that if you're going to have sound on your website you must have a mute button. The easiest example at to why is that many (if not most) people browse the web while listening to their music library, or to a lesser extent watching tv (or some sort of video). Not giving the option to mute, you're sending a message to those people saying quite clearly "look, if you can't dedicate all of your senses to this website, leave." That's totally unnecessary, if not a little offensive.

Another reasoning I have behind always being able to mute specific items is that it creates a barrier to those who need to use a screen reader. This doesn't really apply in this case though because we're developing the site in flash.

The more I think about it, the less fond of this second fact I am. Infact, I'm not fond of this fact at all, and really never was, but failed to bring this up. (Why, I don't know.)

Flash is a means of web development. Yes, it's great for interactives, but it's awful for basic tasks. For starters: it completely excludes anyone with ANY accessibility concerns. Secondly, flash is proprietary software meaning that if for some reason you can't get a player from Adobe, you can't view the page.

Alaternatively a standards based website can have the text scaled, have the colors changed if need be, and information can be ported to other devices (such as a screen reader) so that the same site can be used by anyone. Also the only requirements for access are to have a web browser and an internet connection.

For many the solution here is to create a second standards based version of the site so that those who for whatever reason can't/won't visit the flash site can still access the site. This is a good first step. But often these non-flash sites get neglected in terms of design. Here you're creating a seperate but equal senario. (And we all know how that winds up)

The better solution is to ONLY make a standards based website. "But Andrew!" You might exclaim, "if I do that I'll have to sacrafice all the nice fluid elements of my interface." And to that I would say you're mistaken. The solution here is to incorperate ECMAScript, otherwise known as JavaScript (no relation to Java). Why is this better? It's standards based, allows you to all those web interface things you might wish to do with flash, but without telling those with accessibility concerns that they belong at the back of the bus.