Dynamic Flash

Yesterday, Adobe released Flash Player 9 Update 3 Beta 2, which (aside from a ridiculously convoluted name) has caused much furore in the industry.

With the big headline feature of the beta dominating the blogosphere - that’ll be native HD-video playback via H.264 support, in case you’ve been hiding under a rock - you’d be forgiven for thinking that this was the only feature added to this release. In fact, there were several less glamourous features listed in the release notes that passed pretty much uncommented, including support for Flex framework caching and full-screen support on Linux.

One of these less-publicised features is that Flash Player 9 for plugin-based browsers on Windows, which includes Firefox, Opera and Safari 3, now supports the Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) layer, which means that properly-authored Flash content should now be accessibly to screen reader users on Windows regardless of which web browser they choose to use. Support for MSAA in Internet Explorer has been included since Flash Player 6.0r65, so it’s nice to see support now being added across all supported web browsers on Windows.

This isn’t a panacea for all Flash’s accessibility ills - the Flash Player is still lacking support for accessibility layers on other platforms, for example - but, when coupled with the ability to get video subtitles included in the H.264 feature, it is an encouraging step in the right direction for Adobe.