Alt tags for swish/flash buttons?

[Murky]

Hi - I'm trying out Swish and have got as far as setting up a swf movie that acts as a splash screen for my website. It works fine, but I'm keen to make my site as Accessible as possible and always include Alt tags for text browsers/ screen readers. How and where in the code do I include an Alt tag for the Enter button in my splash screen movie?

Thanks in anticipation...

Murky

[Veniogenesis]

You cannot make html tags for buttons within a flash-enabled movie. The whole flash movie is one file and it has little or no interaction with the html portion of the page. If you just want a popup message to come up on rollover, you'll have to make the message/textbox manually.

regards,
venio

[Murky]

Thanks for the reply. Ok - so if I can't place an Alt tag that refers to the button within the movie, is there a way I can include one for the whole movie file: treating the whole space as a button? Presumably if I use Swish to create menus or standalone buttons for a website they can be Alt tagged? Or are we saying here that there's no way to Alt tag any kind of links/ buttons made with Flash / Swish??? If so, that would seem a bit negative in terms of disability access issues...

Bestest

Murky

[wolfgross]

...why do you want to "alt tag" buttons? If you want a descriptive text to appear on mouse over, then just place the text in the "over state" of the button.
.swf files, the export product of SWiSH can only get displayed by flash player and flash player doesn't read html attributes.

wolf

[Murky]

The ALT tags are for blind users - they're the only clue audible screen readers can give when a link appears as a graphic. If the text was part of the graphic - when the mouse was over it, say - it would still be graphical content, not text readable by a screen reader.

What I'm trying to do is integrate flash elements in such a way that I don't have to double-up instructions in text too, as I can with jpgs or gifs as buttons using ALT. If flash won't allow this, it can't be used properly as an essential/useful part of a truly accessible website - at least not as a means of navigation.

Thanks for your reply, though. Good to know there's help here.

Bestest

Murky

[grumblemarc]

Your best bet then would just to be to use html code for the button-with or without a standard graphic image. Leave the rest of the splash page flash. This will allow the user the capability to do what you are looking to do-make the site accesible.

<object classid="clsid27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,29,0" width="800" height="500">
<param name="movie" value="whatever.swf">
<param name="quality" value="high">
<embed src="whatever.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="800" height="500"></embed></object>

There is no where in the above code that allows for ALT tags.

BUT!! I just thought of something. Perhaps you can get a small sound effect that says "enter" or something similar and incorporate it into your flash movie as a mousover event?

[Murky]

Thanks for the help. The 'sound' suggestion is interesting!

Murky

[davidhannes]

Okay so does anyone know how to add the equivalent of an alt tag to a flash file in my HTML page so that the spider bots don't flip out over my page?

If so where and how?

[wolfgross]

David...this topic is over 5 years old - lots of things have changed since then - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...-indexing.html

wolf