A growing requirement for web content is that it should be accessible to people who have disabilities. Visually impaired people can use the visual content in Flash applications by using screen reader software, which provides an audio description of the material on the screen.

When you create a component, you can include ActionScript that enables the component and a screen reader for audio communication. When developers use your component to build an application in Flash, they use the Accessibility panel to configure each component instance.

Flash includes the following accessibility features:

• Custom focus navigation
• Custom keyboard shortcuts
• Screen-based documents and the screen authoring environment
• An Accessibility class

To enable accessibility in your component, add the following line to your component's class file:

mx.accessibility.ComponentName.enableAccessibility();

For example, the following line enables accessibility for the MyButton component:

mx.accessibility.MyButton.enableAccessibility();

For additional information about accessibility, see Creating Accessible Applications.