New Flash Player with MSAA on Firefox and H.264 Video
In case people haven't heard, we have a new version of the Flash Player available as of last night. The features that I'm most excited about are the support for H.264 video - so now you can have high-definition video and you can provide captions using the caption support released in Flash CS3 - and the addition of MSAA support for Firefox so users of screen readers such as JAWS and Window-Eyes that use Firefox for browsing the web can interact with Flash content. The new player version is 9,0,115,0 and you can get it at http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer.
Comments
Hi Andrew, I've been trying to get harder info on the "MSAA support in Windows Plugin" in the docs.
Which browsers (brand and version) have we tested with which screenreaders (brand and version)? Should it theoretically work in other browsers we haven't tested, or are there additional dependencies? Any gotchas?
tx, jd
Posted by: John Dowdell | December 4, 2007 3:15 PM
Andrew, so no more suggesting JAWS users to use only IE?
Are there any known issues of MSAA support for Firefox?
peace, veiky
Posted by: Vivek Gaikwad | December 5, 2007 12:21 AM
Vivek,
That's right - Flash is now cross-browser with regard to accessibility for assistive technology users!
There aren't specific limitations with regard to the Flash player, but there are limitations with regard to our scripts for Flex, since there are differences in the way that JAWS scripts are able to work with these different browsers - the scripts are specific to IE. However, the screen readers have become better at identifying controls other than the handful of control types associated with HTML, so the scripts are becoming less needed.
Posted by: Andrew Kirkpatrick | December 5, 2007 7:29 AM
John,
The official testing for the plugin was with Firefox 2.0.0.8 and Jaws 9 and Firefox 2.0.0.8 and Windows-Eyes 5.
AWK
Posted by: Andrew Kirkpatrick | December 5, 2007 10:11 PM
Presumably as this is MSAA you're limited to just Win32 Firefox?
Posted by: Robin | December 11, 2007 11:51 AM
Robin, that is correct.
Posted by: Andrew Kirkpatrick | December 11, 2007 11:54 AM
Out of curiosity are there any plans to extend the Flash player to support accessibility frameworks on other platforms and OS's? I know the large majority of users with AT needs are on Windows but there seems to be some good work being down by Apple and Gnome. Firefox at least is starting to integrate with their frameworks, but I've no idea whether that helps you or not.
Posted by: Robin | December 12, 2007 12:06 PM
Its great to now have high definition video with this version........can't wait to download this new version.
Posted by: Vectorpedia(Rick) | January 15, 2008 7:56 PM
As far as I know, there is no MSAA support for the Adobe AIR platform. Do you know if there are any plans to support screen readers such as JAWS on AIR? My diploma thesis covers an accessible DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) player implementation with FLEX, and it would be a great plus if AIR'd work with JAWS.
Posted by: Wolfram Eberius | July 18, 2008 9:29 AM
What is the status of Adobe AIR accessibility? While information appears to be available on Flex, Flash, and PDF access, the info for AIR apps is sparce. Testing suggests that no applications are accessible.
Posted by: Pratik Patel | August 4, 2008 12:10 AM
Does anyone know if the latest version of Flash is compatible with Firefox 3.0?
Thanks.
Posted by: Debbie Messer | September 1, 2008 1:14 PM
Flash accessibility does function with Firefox 3.
Posted by: Andrew Kirkpatrick | September 2, 2008 9:08 AM
its good i want this flashplayer
Posted by: mohmed omar | September 16, 2008 11:48 AM
has it been tested with Thunder screen reader (open source)??a
Posted by: gus | October 30, 2008 4:57 PM