Couple of days after I published a story on Steve, I got contacted totally unrelated by another blind person regarding one of my plugins, Smart Youtube.
It turns out that after you use wmode='transparent' in the embed code (which is necessary so that videos do not overlap your images or other parts of design in some cases), the video player controls become inaccessible to screen readers (like JAWS) that blind people use to browse the Internet.
And this is basically technological limitation of Flash as transparent Flash objects can't expose accessibility data to outside software.
Since Smart Youtube is so popular and used on probably 100,000 blogs or more I am now in dilemma how to solve this problem. Removing wmode transparent by default so that screen readers work, will hinder the usability of the plugin and in some cases render videos over images and other neighboring content.
I can add an option to enable wmode transparent for those who want it with a text that it will hinder the browsing experience of blind people but that really sounds bad, and I wouldn't want anyone to feel bad about it.
I hope there is someone with an idea out there.
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Posted in: Startups
TAGS:accessability problems, active accessibility api, compatibility jaws youtube, firefox plugin blind people, flash accessability, flash blind, flash blind people, flash plugin blind, jaws wmode, problems blind, problems blind people, problems blinds pepole, solutions help blind people, wmode screen reader, wordpress blind people, youtube blind people
5 Comments
I'm in the process of redesigning a business site (moving to wordpress from plain html) and just got a -complement- in my inbox for making the site much easier to navigate using a screen reader.
Accessibility issues are becoming more important as those who are disabled are learning that there ARE resources they can access online. Which in turn means more sites need to be more accessible.
I didn't quite expect a direct response from adobe but well done on being on top of things.
To answer your question, including wmode=transparent was one of the most asked things. I think part of the problem lies in WordPress itself and the integrated editor which is not able to efficiently align objects on the page.
I sent Matt (the guy who got in touch) an old version of the plugin so he can use it on his site, but I am still troubled by the problem. I have to say I feel the greatest respect for people like Matt.
Sorry, that's true... the Microsoft Active Accessibility API does require that the application "own the window" to communicate with screenreaders, and the WMODE attribute to pipe plugin content to the browser (rather than to its own borderless window atop the browser) does not support this messaging.
http://niquimerret.com/?p=94#comment-3082
There are other APIs coming down the pipe for better assistive technology, but right now I don't know a way around that "WMODE settings will prevent text-to-speech", sorry. (Is there a significant number of people who try to lay HTML graphics atop these videos?)
jd/adobe
Problem is not related to Firefox only, but to all other browsers as well.
If I understand correctly, JAWS render what's displayed on Firefox, in a way accessible to blind people.
So, there's a fairly simple solution: create a Firefox extension, called "Smart Youtube JAWS compability" or something, that will automatically remove the "wmode='transparent'" thingy. That way, blind people just have to install the extension to render Smart Youtube compatible with JAWS.
Well, another solution would be to contact Freedom Scientific and discuss the problem with them.