Flash: Disabling Accessibility (disable tabbing)
By default, viewers can tab through a Flash movie. This is so that those with hearing disabilities, photo epilepsy, motor disabilities, cognitive disabilities, blindness or low vision can navigate a Flash site by using the tab key on their keyboard. For many applications this is good, especially Flash applications that include forms. Problems arise when one has scrolling clickable buttons off the screen.
Do we want users to able to click buttons that off the screen? This could break many Flash movies.
The way to stop users from tabbing a particular button is by setting the movieclips property, “tabEnabled” to false. Well, that’s a pain to do for every movieclip in an entire application. To disable tabbing through all clickable buttons, add the following line of Actionscript to the main timeline of your movie.
MovieClip.prototype.tabEnabled = false;
This will cause all movieclips created by Flash to disable tabbing.
–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com
A note about the author
Media designer with experience in interactive, print and video. I have a marketing and advertising agency background and currently work full-time at a full-service agency. Visit my contact page, even if you would just like to say hello. To stay in touch, follow me on Twitter or connect on a variety of other social networks. Thanks for stopping by!
Further Reading on Flash
- Flash workflow productivity tips: part 2
- Flash: Old Flash Players for testing
- Flash: Flash JavaScript Integration Kit
February 7th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
That, is, superb.
March 2nd, 2010 at 12:32 pm
Brilliant!
March 25th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
Also global function to disble tab key of all buttons on your swf:
Button.prototype.tabEnabled=false;
Appreciated!!!