With the proliferation of policies and standards around the world which require that information technology be made accessible to people with disabilities, designers and developers are seeking to create applications and web content that are available to all. Accordingly, content must be made accessible to users who employ a variety of assistive technologies such as screen readers, alternative pointing devices, and captioning tools.

Now, with Macromedia Director MX, multimedia and web developers have a powerful authoring tool for building rich, accessible, interactive content that combines audio, video, bitmaps, vectors, text, fonts, and more. Director MX includes new drag-and-drop accessibility features to create completely customizable tab navigation and self-voicing applications that rely on system-level voices rather than screen readers and captioning. Designers and developers can work efficiently within the familiar Macromedia MX user interface and take advantage of lightweight vector graphics with unprecedented Macromedia Flash MX integration. Developers can also author and play back content on Macintosh OS X. In addition, Director MX gives developers or designers the ability to author in Macintosh OS X and create Shockwave applications and executables that can be viewed on pre-Macintosh OS X systems.

This paper describes how to use the Accessibility Behavior Library in Director MX to update an existing Director movie for accessibility.

Updating Existing Content Using the New Accessibility Behaviors of Macromedia Director MX

This article looks at the process of retrofitting an existing Director movie for accessibility. Starting with a very simple calculator application created in Director 8.5, the goal is to make this tool accessible for people who are blind as well as people with mobility impairments. In its original version, the calculator is not accessible because it relies exclusively on the use of the mouse. For people with mobility and visual impairments, this prevents them from being able to selecting the individual buttons and using the application.

The process of retrofitting the calculator will make use of the new accessibility behaviors in Director MX to make the calculator a self-voicing application. Each time the user presses a key, the name of the key, such as ‘9’ or ‘plus’ will be read out loud. This provides users with visual disabilities with a means of distinguishing between individual keys. With an array of new drag-and-drop accessibility behaviors and Speech Xtra function in Director MX, this process with be relatively quick and easy. The Speech Xtra takes advantage of native text to speech solutions within the operating system. One benefit of this approach is that it makes these applications accessible on both the Windows and Macintosh operating systems.

In order to follow along step by step, the following assets are available for download:

Macintosh Assets (SIT, 52KB)
Windows Assets (ZIP, 1.7MB)

Before You Begin

The first step in creating accessible content is to consider how a person with a disability will interact with the application. In the case of the calculator, what instructions need to be provided to users with disabilities? How will those instructions be made available? For blind users, should speech be on by default or will a brief welcome suffice? What keystrokes are used? Are these consistent with keystrokes used elsewhere in the operating system? Are all functions accessible via the keyboard?

In all cases, it is important that instructions be provided to help a user with a disability understand the controls available. For sighted users, these controls are often very intuitive. Using the mouse, they are able to move between different controls and select them easily. However, if the mouse is not an option, it is often very difficult to understand how to select or to move between different controls. An instruction screen may be an invaluable tool for users with disabilities to understand an application.

A second issue to consider is how blind users will locate the instructions. Since Director MX movies are self voicing, some level of speech must be on by default. There are at least two approaches here. First, all controls may be spoken by default. This is the simplest option and provides the greatest level of access. Second, a welcome greeting may be spoken by default with a brief instruction for activating speech. For example, on opening, this calculator might only read, “Welcome. Press ‘1’ for speech.” This provides blind users with the information they need to access the controls to start.

Should the designer decide to enable speech at the start of the movie, it is necessary to provide a ‘Speech off’ button that gives users the option to turn the self-voicing feature of the movie on or off if it interferes with any assistive devices they may be using. This feature would also be useful for users who are in an environment where speech is inappropriate or disruptive, such as libraries, classrooms, or office environments.

For users with mobility impairments, who may not be able to use the mouse, it is desirable to make the calculator fully accessible using the keyboard. The designer or developer can accomplish this task and save valuable time by using the Accessibility Tabbing Behaviors from the Behavior Library. These options, which are limited to keystrokes, Tab, shift-Tab, Return, Ctrl-Page Down, Ctrl-Page Up, and mouse navigation, may not allow fully customizable keyboard control, but they do enable the designer to make the calculator keyboard-navigable quickly and easily.

Updating the Movie

The process of retrofitting existing Director content for accessibility requires at least three steps. First, each object needs to be defined as an Accessibility Target, which allows the designer to assign the accessibility properties. Second, Tabbing behaviors must be added which will permit users to navigate using either the keyboard or the mouse. The third step is adding the Speak behaviors.

Using the Accessibility behaviors from the Behavior Library, the developer will add an Accessibility Target and a Keyboard Control behavior to the movie. These behaviors function as a messaging center for all of the accessibility behaviors’ communications. When applying the Accessibility Target behavior, the designer or developer will define an Accessibility group name that will be used for all of the other behaviors in the movie.

The Tabbing behaviors include Accessibility Item and Group Order. When applying these behaviors, it is important to make sure that the Accessibility Group name is consistent with the group name used in the Target and Keyboard Control behaviors.

The Speak behaviors include Accessibility Speak and Speak Member Text. The Speak behavior is intended for short strings of text, while the Speak Member Text behavior is used for longer strings.

A possible fourth step might be to add captioning to the movie if it contains audio content that is not available in a visual form for the hearing impaired. Captioning behaviors include Accessibility Captioning and Synch Captioning.

The following are specific actions that must be taken in order to accomplish these steps. Each is discussed in more detail below.

• Applying the Accessibility behaviors to the sprites in your movie
• Applying the Accessibility Target behavior
• Applying the Accessibility Keyboard Control behavior
• Applying the Accessibility Item or Text Edit Item behavior
• Applying the Accessibility Group Order behavior
• Adding the Speech Xtra to the movie
• Ascertaining that the user’s computer has the proper voice capabilities
• Applying the Accessibility Speak or Speak Member Text behavior

Applying the Accessibility behaviors to the sprites in your movie

The built-in Accessibility behaviors in Director MX can be found in the Behavior Library. If the palette is not open in your panel set, select Window > Library Palette. The Behavior inspector also provides important information in the process of updating the calculator.

Applying the Accessibility Target behavior

The Accessibility Target behavior is the main control in the Accessibility Behavior Library. It allows the other Accessibility behaviors to interact with one another. From the Tools palette, use the rectangle tool to create a rectangle-shaped sprite offstage; then use the drag-and-drop feature to link it to the Accessibility Target behavior. The rectangular sprite acts as a “focus ring” or visual indicator; as the user clicks Tab to move from one accessible sprite to the next, the focus ring highlights the current sprite with which the user is interacting. The target rectangle is shown in the screen below.

Applying the Accessibility Keyboard Control behavior

The Keyboard Control behaviors in Director MX are linked to Tab and Return. Alternatively, with Lingo, a developer can write custom scripts to use other keys from the keyboard as appropriate. In either case, it is essential to provide keyboard control instructions for the user.

The Accessibility Keyboard Control behavior, which works with the Accessibility Item and Group Order behaviors, must be applied to an editable text sprite offstage. This behavior intercepts and acts upon keyboard events, allowing an action to be initiated when the user clicks Tab or Return.

Applying the Accessibility Item or Text Edit Item behavior

In order to permit users to navigate sprites using Tab, link the Accessibility Item or Text Edit Item behavior to each sprite using the drag-and-drop feature. Our example uses custom Lingo scripts, so it is necessary to type the name of the script to execute.

Note the command name ‘numPressed.’ This command name is defined in a movie script in our cast.

Applying the Accessibility Group Order behavior

This behavior allows an Accessibility Item to be assigned a tab order. Tab order must be sequential. If the developer attempts to leave gaps to tab order for additional items added later, the user will have that many additional tab presses before reaching the item. For example, if the tab index for the first button is set to ‘1’ and the tab index for the second button is set to ‘3’, it will take two tab presses to move from the first to the second button. This practice makes it easier to add a button in between the first two later, however it can also result in confusing behaviors in the application. Proper pre-planning is important here.

Adding the Speech Xtra to the movie

If the developer wishes the speech behaviors to use the Speech Xtra when the movie is published (either as a projector or Shockwave file), it is necessary to add the Speech Xtra to the movie’s Xtras list. The Speech Xtra can be found in the main menu by selecting Modify > Movie > Xtras.

Ascertaining that the user’s computer has the proper voice capabilities

It is important to make sure that the user’s voice settings are loaded and functioning using the new Lingo functions provided to work with the Speech Xtra. This can be accomplished by placing a simple frame script in the first frame of the movie. If the user’s computer does not have the proper voice capabilities, the movie will not play. It may then be desirable to provide the user with a link to the information he or she will need.

Applying the Accessibility Speak or Speak Member Text behavior

This behavior permits a string to be spoken when the user navigates to a sprite using Tab. After adding the Accessibility Item and Group Order behaviors to a sprite, link the Accessibility Speak behavior to it using the click-and-drag feature.

Applying the Accessibility Speak Enable Disable behavior

Using the Accessibility Speak Enable Disable behavior, it is possible to give the user the ability to turn the speech on or off. Link this behavior to a button, text, or graphic sprite using the click-and-drag feature, indicate the type of action required to activate the behavior, and enter the text to be spoken when the user executes the action.

Writing useful instructions

An important step that must not be overlooked is providing instructions for the user. It is important to keep all users in mind while writing instructions. The sample below offers clear and concise directions, along with specific instructions for certain users and helpful information about the calculator’s limitations. Easy-to-follow instructions are beneficial to all users, not only those with special needs.

Conclusion

For the developer, deciding whether to retrofit existing content or to start over can be tricky. The size of the project may be the determining factor. In some cases it may be easier to start with a new movie. In the example above, retrofitting the calculator was a relatively easy process using the Accessibility Behaviors in Director MX. It took only a short time to give the existing calculator voice and keyboard access using the Behaviors library and Speech Xtra. The retrofitted calculator is now a useful tool for users with disabilities, as well as for students who require a bit more interactivity to help them learn. An experienced Lingo programmer has the ability to add even more functionality to this calculator with Lingo and the new speech functions provided in Director MX.

Careful consideration and planning go into making applications and web content accessible for users with disabilities, but these same techniques can also make them more usable for all.

About the Author
Laura Keen is the product manager for accessibility at Macromedia. She works with engineers and designers within Macromedia to improve the accessibility of Macromedia tools.

Ms. Keen is a recent graduate of the Art Institute of Dallas majoring in multimedia/web development.