Providing submit buttons in Flash

Important Information about Techniques

See Understanding Techniques for WCAG Success Criteria for important information about the usage of these informative techniques and how they relate to the normative WCAG 2.1 success criteria. The Applicability section explains the scope of the technique, and the presence of techniques for a specific technology does not imply that the technology can be used in all situations to create content that meets WCAG 2.1.

Applicability

Note

Adobe has plans to stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020, and encourages authors interested in creating accessible web content to use HTML.

This technique relates to Success Criterion 3.2.2: On Input (Sufficient as a way to meet G80: Providing a submit button to initiate a change of context).

Description

The objective of this technique is to use submit buttons to allow users to take actions that cause changes of context rather than allowing changes in context to occur when the value or state of a non-submit button control is modified. The intended use of a submit button in this technique is to generate an HTTP request that submits data entered in a form or to perform an action that triggers a change in context, so it is an appropriate control to use to initiate this change.

Examples

Example 1: ActionScript 3 combobox with submit button

This is a basic ActionScript 3 example of a combobox component with a submit button to redirect the user to a different resource. 

import fl.accessibility.ComboBoxAccImpl;
import flash.net.navigateToURL;
import flash.net.URLRequest;
ComboBoxAccImpl.enableAccessibility();
state_submit.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, submitHandler);
function submitHandler(e) {
  var url: URLRequest = new URLRequest("http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/" + 
    state_combo.selectedLabel);
  navigateToURL(url, "_self");
}

Example 2: ActionScript 2 combobox with submit button

This is a basic ActionScript 2 example of a combobox component with a submit button to redirect the user to a different resource - the same example as in example 1 except in ActionScript 2: 

import fl.accessibility.ComboBoxAccImpl;
ComboBoxAccImpl.enableAccessibility();
state_submit.addEventListener("click", submitHandler);
function submitHandler(e) {
  getURL("http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/" + state_combo.selectedLabel, "_self");
}

Tests

Procedure

  1. Find all interactive control instances (that are not submit buttons) in the flash movie that can initiate a change of context, e.g. a combobox, radio button or checkbox.
  2. For each instance, confirm that the event handler(s) responsible for the change of context are not associated with the controls themselves, but with a separate button instead.

Expected Results

#2 is true