Accessibility and Captivate

Accessibility is not creating a Captivate movie that is easy to navigate or find. Accessibility is publishing a Captivate SWF that meets the compliance requirements in Section 508 of the United States Rehabilitation Act. This act essentially mandates that any work done for any form of government must meet accessibility standards. Captivate falls into that category.

To those of you who claim, "I am not doing any government work in the U.S.," my response is, "You don't have a choice." The bottom line is that accessibility is now entrenched in legislation, and you are going to have to make your work accessible to those with disabilities whether you choose to or not. The European Union is requiring that all sites be accessible, too. Educational institutions have the same requirement, and it is only a matter of time before business adopts accessibility standards as well.

Consider this rather interesting fact: Over 70 percent of the U.S. population who are legally blind are either unemployed or underemployed. Of that group, only 1 percent has access to the Web content that could potentially change their situation. This means that, in effect, 99 percent of the blind population is locked out of the Web.

One of the companies leading the accessibility movement is Macromedia. They not only see accessibility in business terms, but they see it as a societal issue and have a number of accessibility experts on staff charged with helping Macromedia's clients prepare accessible content for their clients.

To create a Section 508compliant movie

1.	Select Movie > Preferences. The Movie Options dialog box opens.
2.	Select the Preferences tab.
3.	In the Output Options area, select "508 compliance" (Figure 9.30). Figure 9.30. Selecting 508 compliance in the Movie Preferences dialog box makes the navigation accessible.
4.	Click OK.

Hints for using 508 compliance

In Captivate, selecting "508 compliance" makes the SWF's navigation accessible, but you can go further than that with the various objects in your movies.

Start with a name that means something and a concise description of the project in the Movie Properties dialog box (Figure 9.31).

Figure 9.31. Screen readers will read concise descriptions in the Movie Properties dialog box.

For those with hearing impairments, if you are narrating a slide, consider placing the narration in a caption on the slide. Conversely, for those with visual impairments, consider narrating the contents of captions.

To make captions accessible to screen readers, select the slide where the captions appear and click the Slide Properties button. When the Slide Properties dialog box opens, enter a concise label and click the Accessibility button to open the Slide Accessibility Text dialog box (Figure 9.32). Click the Insert Slide Text button, and the caption text appears in the input area.

Figure 9.32. Screen readers can read captions by clicking the Accessibility button in the Slide Properties dialog box.

You don't have to use the captions in the Insert Slide Text dialog box. You can use the text input area to enter text that describes the slide. This text will be read only by screen readers.

All navigation dialog boxes contain keyboard equivalents. Use them for those who are visually or mobility impaired (Figure 9.33).

Figure 9.33. A keystroke instead of a mouse click is added to a click box.

Finally, use the Captivate Help Files to learn more about making your Captivate movies accessible. Select Help > Captive Help or press F1. When the Help screen opens, click the Index tab. Accessibility is the first entry in the Captivate Help list.