PDF + Flash vs. Accessible Design?

Now that Adobe acquired Macromedia that heinous Freehand app might be off market but what they're doing with Flash is just scary.

While Flash is a great tool for interactive displays, mini games and to embed audio and video into a web-site, using it to solely build a website is a strict no-no.

If you want to lock out people with a disability and do some content euthanasia that's never a great marketing scheme. Guess what, blind people buy skin-care products too! But what Adobe has done here with parts of their web-site is beyond embarrassing for any web designer. What can be a valid reason to display text in a Flash where HTML would have been better? Search engines can't find it and the major screen-readers won't see them for their users.

With the emerging of poorly designed websites like adobe.com it's getting incredibly hard for makers of screen reader software. They now are brutally forced into breaking flash content apart and guessing the text that's flattened to paths due to idiotic font licenses issued by elderly morons or trying to get down through the layers that cover the text that is embedded into the .swf file. Guess what, even giants like JAWS need to make money on their software, if you make their job impossible, you will loose sales. Not because they may abandon your format or focus on another business but because YOU where too stupid to produce an accessible document.

Recap:

1. Flatten type to paths in a PDF = You're an idiot.
2. Flatten type to paths in a Flash movie = You're an ignorant idiot.
3. Using a flattened PDF in a Flash movie = Braindead.

Leaving text as text would break some font licenses made by some ignorant numb-nuts. I think they deserve a kick in the very same. Would you believe that in 2005 there were licenses that would not allow a font to be rendered at a height of 200 pixels? The name of that foundry is Hoefler and Frere-Jones. Great designers, but ignorant morons. You also can't embed the fonts in a PDF or a Flash.

Happy Holidays!