Flex 3 And Section 508 Compliance

[brixel]

Hey guys,

We are developing a new RIA that has pretty complex screens, navigation system, modal modules loading on top of others, detailed interaction with grids, trees, etc. and a requirement for making it 508 compliant has come across my desk.

I've done a bit of research on what Adobe has to offer on their compliance. The components look to be compliant, but from what I can tell the compliance works best on simple forms and screens that don't require a great deal of complexity. I'm also having trouble finding real world examples of people who have developed complex RIAs in Flex made for 508 compliance.

Silverlight is also being evaluated, and I'm not sure if they are any better when it comes to the complexity of a deep RIA.

Does anyone here have any experience developing for 508 in Flex, and if so can you shed some light on what challenges a developer might face, or any short comings of Flex that would prevent it from conforming to 508?

I'd also appreciate any RIAs anyone can point me to that are 508 compliant, they seem to be few and far, even the ones listed at Adobe, most are broken links or no longer available.

Thanks.

[Peter Cowling]

Hi,

I guess you have seen this from Adobe (http://www.adobe.com/resources/accessibility/tools/vpat/flex-builder3_508.html).

I have overseen equivalent work in the UK.

It is going to be difficult to be fully compliant all the time. However, it should also relatively easy to be almost fully compliant, almost all of the time.

To be compliant enough to be helpful to most users, and withstand an audit without too much flak, the key is to demonstrate that you are covering the most specific requirement: you offer the options that the majority of users require, and that you offer telephone assistance and email assistance from any point that a user gets stuck.

In practical terms, offering keyboard assistance, avoiding color-only visual prompts, and support for the blind would be the key must-dos.

[JamesBondIsDead]

Here is a 508 compliance example of bolding selected rows in an AdvancedDataGrid --> http://pastebin.com/f172c1a91

This was a client requirement.
This approach works pretty well with a relatively small set of data.
However, when the data gets large, it is way to slow.
If anyone knows a faster approach, please post a reply.

Thanks.

[Jerry62712]

What I've done on the application I'm working on is to have two slider bars to control the font size (12 to 20) and contrast (normal to black and white). In both these cases I'm changing the CSS.

Next I'm working on getting JAWS to work right.