[thelist] flash accessibility/usability

[martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com]

Memo from Martin P Burns of PricewaterhouseCoopers

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To:    thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject:    RE: [thelist] flash accessibility/usability


>At 10:22 AM +0000 2/27/02, martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com wrote:
<context>
"If
Flash has all these capabilities to reduce or remove many of the
main criticisms of Flash, why don't people use them..?"
I don't know if you can answer that or not, or if the answer you'd give
is any more than the current suggestion that "It takes too long",
</context>
>>which
>>either speaks to the laziness/narcissism of Flash developers (ie that
>>it doesn't take too long - they'd just rather create stuff that goes
whiz),
>>or to a weakness in the tool that essential tasks are difficult to carry
>>out.

I've re-added the context above, which you didn't seem to see.

What I said was not "all Flash developers are lazy/narcissistic" but
"One possibility for there not being much good Flash is if there are
a large number of lazy/narcissistic Flash developers"

Your argument all along is that Flash is capable of better things, but
people don't use them. I expanded on that, contrasting against the
alternative which is "Flash doesn't make it easy enough to do anything
else"

If there's not much good Flash out there, then either it's a problem with
the tool (you say that it's not), or with a fair proportion of the people
using
it.

>Why don't you point me to a resource which is critical of Flash that
>demonstrates with Flash that demonstrates it's inherent shortcomings?
>I'd really like to see this, I doubt one exists ... people as sharply
>critical of Flash don't know dink about it.

My point all along has been "It's difficult to tell whether the problem
is with the tool, or the way it's used - but if it's so commonly misused
does the distinction matter?"

>It was cool to diss frames for a period of time before
>people learned when and how to use them.

Y'see, that's one of the basic problems with Flash - very few people
*know* when it adds value.

I'm sorry you missed me saying it earlier, but I have not at any point
said "Never use Flash". I have consistently said "If you want to use
Flash, demonstrate that it's going to add (net) value" because I know
that you as a professional would not suggest "use Flash" as the
default way of building a site.

There's a phrase in the marketing industry "Media neutral", used
by a number of agencies who are fed up of "TV specialists" and
"Internet specialists" (etc) who always seem to suggest their
speciality as the best way of solving any problem. Media Neutral
agencies will pick the best tool for the job. If a tool does have some
issues (like the length of time taken to produce and book a slot for
a TV ad), then there must be benefits to overcome them.

Flash *does* have some issues (eg you need to do more work to
get the stuff HTML gives you for free, so the cost goes up), so you're
going to have to argue for it on a case-by-case basis.

Cheers
Martin


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