coldfusion flash integration:

There is an option on the <cfform> tag called ACCESSIBLE. The description
says,"Specifies whether to include support screen readers in the Flash form.
Screen reader support adds approximately 80KB to the SWF file sent to the
client." Default value is NO.

Example:

<CFFORM format="flash" action="document.cfm" accessible="yes"></CFFORM>

However you might want to check which screen reader you use. I work for the
USPS. We have to make sure that all of our pages are 508 compliant also. I
just checked with our compliance depatment and Some elements on flash forms are
compliant and some are not meaning you can't use it. Also the <cfgrid> using
flash is not compliant. So you still have to use the older stuff. It seems
like all the new flash features are not compliant. Flash paper is not
compliant either. We use the screen reader JAWS here. I am told that JAWS is
what the majority of people use. So good luck.

Originally posted by: chris2u99
I just checked with our compliance depatment and Some elements on flash forms
are compliant and some are not meaning you can't use it.

I also work as contractor for goverment agencies. We are in the same situation
here, we basically tested the Flash form using JAWS screen reader but we are
not being able to read all of the fields. Chris, could you post the specifics
of the your compliance test?

This "flash forms are 508 compliant" from Macromedia sounds so Microsoft-like
that I cannot believe it is just a marketing strategy; I want to believe that I
am doing something wrong in my development and that the form is actually 508
compliant. Help!

Thanks,

Well we didn't do a full blown test. I just created some flash forms and tried
using the new calender functions and JAWS just skipped over it. It acted as
though it was never there.

508 Compliant means you have to offer an other option if the things you have
are not compliant. So I am just going to make 2 different versions. Which
part of the Government are you a contractor for? I am a contractor for the
United States Postal Service.

So it skipped the calendar? what about the text fields and select boxes? did it
work for those? They did not worked correctly for me by I am not an expert in
JAWS. I hope the problem is that I am doing something wrong. I certainly would
hope that the basic types of fields be 508 compliant (like text, select, radio
buttons, check boxes).

Here at DOL we are looking to provide a rich-user experience for the admin
interfaces using Coldfusion, but if this 508 compliance does not work then we
would have to forget about it.

i didn't test any text boxes or select boxes. I did test the Flash Paper and
PDF stuff and it skipped over that stuff too. It doesn't look good. I am no
expert in JAWS either, however, the person that did the testing said it did not
pass. I think Flash has a ways to go before it becomes compliant. It may work
with other screen readers just not JAWS. Either way my boss said we would
have to offer an alternative if we wanted to use it. We purchased it mainly
for the Dynamic PDF capabilities. The flash forms would be nice to use though.
I guess i will see.

Alternatively, have you thought of using a session or request scope variable
that speicifies which format to produce. You could change between xml and flash
formats easily (with a bit of forethought).

<cfform format="#formatXMLorFlash#" .... >
.
.
.
</cfform>