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Stuart · 03-11-2004, 11:32

Blue Raja's post here and particularly the link it contains prompted a question in my mind.

What do you people think? Do too many websites rely on Flash?

I personally think too many sites do. The article linked to by Blue Raja's post points out that although the BBC's coverage (and use of Flash) is very good, most of the other news sites could have created their pages using pure DHTML (or HTML in some cases) which would have made the site accesable to many more people.

As far as I am concenerd, sites can use Flash by all means. But, they should (where possible) provide a non-flash version of the site with the same content.

I think this partly because not all people want Flash Player installed on their PC (or other browsing device), partly because Flash is not available on all platforms (for instance, my P800 doesn't support flash movies), but mostly because, despite improvements in the new version, Flash still doesn't support disabled web users very well. Blind users, for instance, may rely on Screen readers to describe what's on screen. Previous versions of Flash didn't support any screen readers, and even now, Flash only supports one or two.

Also, one thing worth noting. For anyone designing commercial websites, I think the Disability Discrimination Act applies to commercial websites as well, so if you don't provide a non-flash site, you could be breaking the law.

03-11-2004, 11:32	#1
Stuart - Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Somewhere Services: Virgin for TV and Internet, BT for phone Posts: 26,546	Flash movies on websites Blue Raja's post here and particularly the link it contains prompted a question in my mind. What do you people think? Do too many websites rely on Flash? I personally think too many sites do. The article linked to by Blue Raja's post points out that although the BBC's coverage (and use of Flash) is very good, most of the other news sites could have created their pages using pure DHTML (or HTML in some cases) which would have made the site accesable to many more people. As far as I am concenerd, sites can use Flash by all means. But, they should (where possible) provide a non-flash version of the site with the same content. I think this partly because not all people want Flash Player installed on their PC (or other browsing device), partly because Flash is not available on all platforms (for instance, my P800 doesn't support flash movies), but mostly because, despite improvements in the new version, Flash still doesn't support disabled web users very well. Blind users, for instance, may rely on Screen readers to describe what's on screen. Previous versions of Flash didn't support any screen readers, and even now, Flash only supports one or two. Also, one thing worth noting. For anyone designing commercial websites, I think the Disability Discrimination Act applies to commercial websites as well, so if you don't provide a non-flash site, you could be breaking the law.