A few days ago, Roger Johansson made a post which brought me to the attention of the flash website flowchart.

Russ’ (thegooglecache) genius confirms many people’s thoughts that flash sites these days are not accessible.

From my intial encounter with flash 5 years ago, it would appear that every common site would have a splash page, some funky motion tweening, some swanky actionscripting that would make you want to learn more. You saw the likes of 2advanced, yugop, and many more making their stand in the web world. It looked like everybody was jumping on the flash/actionscripting bandwagon!

Now that accessibility has made such an impact in the web industry, how things change. Now we surf the web with the hopes of quick loading, search friendly, and cross browser/cross platform friendly sites, that do not deny access to ANYBODY.

For those that attended Robin Christopherson’s talk at @media this year, you will recall his macromedia flash example in which he couldn’t get passed the first slide with his screen reader, despite the presentation being on “Designing Accessible Flash”.

I’ve always been a fan of flash, but only when it is used in the right way. For many entertainment sites, it coincides with the content. You want something cool, something funky, yet you cannot sacrifice that for obtainable content. There has to be a balance.

I believe that flash should be used for subtle effects, what I like to call the niceities of a site. As well as animations such as A Break in the Road, and games such as those created by ferry halim. These sites are created for entertainment value to a particular type of target audience.

For those companies/organisations that wish to reach out to all users, use flash sparingly.