Tommy over at Autistic Cuckoo has posted a little writeup on what’s next for Web Standards. Among his list of things is this:
[there are still many sites that] require third-party products such as Flash to work
I think this point should be looked at from the other side of the fence. Flash is not going away. It’s way way too popular and useful for too many websites.
Once you think of it like this, the problem becomes how tough it is to use Flash in a way that doesn’t invalidate your documents, which is where I think much more fucus needs to go these days.
Standardize the browser plugin architecture and I bet you’ll see way more XHTML valid Flash websites.
As you can see, I emphasised “require”. As long as there are user agents in use that don’t support a particular plug-in (and Lynx will probably never support Flash), you shouldn’t use it for anything critical if you’re concerned about accessibility. That doesn’t mean you can’t use Flash. I’m sure there are real-life uses for it, as enhancement etc. But just like JavaScript, you need to supply an accessible alternative.
Building an entire site in Flash is OK, if you don’t care that some people won’t be able to see it. Of course, that excludes government sites, which must be accessible. But there are other kinds of web sites which may make the choice to exclude certain groups of people.
Flash isn’t going away. It’s developing, and it may even be halfway accessible within the next couple of versions. I’m not saying you can’t use Flash or JavaScript or stuff like that, only that you need to provide alternatives if you care about accessibility.
I’d love to use flash more, but I also like valid code, I can use the flashsatay method but why should I have to? This is a common question yes?
I ask it too but no to no prevail… Why is flash treated different from other forms of media?
I hope one day we can use it validly..!
Safari has some problems with the Flash Satay, and there are also other issues such as a user having Flash 6, and your movie is Flash 7, but the plugin will try to play it anyway, sometimes causing strange things to happen.
I always suggest using Javascript to embed Flash these days.