March/April 2002 - Review of
Educational Uses of Macromedia Flash By: Virgil
E. Varvel Jr. Keywords: Macromedia
Flash, Shockwave, Online Education, Review, Evaluation; Exemplary;
Educational Multimedia
Navigation
Many Web sites also make use of Flash as a form of interactive
navigation for the site. The two sites below were two of the
most complete navigation schemes I was able to find of an educational
nature. You can reach pretty much everything from within the
Flash movies, and they are well organized and understandable.
They are also well organized from a programming standpoint for
the file sizes are kept small to allow quick movement within
the site. These reasons make the following sites exemplary.
The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, no copyright
information given, http://www.ipo.co.il/ ,
accessed March 2002.
This site actually integrates both HTML navigation for major topics with
Flash navigation for sub topics.
There is a pitfall to both of these sites though and a common
one at that. These sites fail to make accommodations for those
with disabilities or who choose not to view Flash content. That
is, neither site has a Flash minus or text only version. Especially
from the standpoint of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, a
large section of their potential market, those with visual disabilities,
cannot easily access information on the site. There may be a
text only site somewhere (or at least a more easily navigable
site for the disabled), but it cannot be accessed directly from
this Flash site. Westminster College overcomes this obstacle
though by providing a phone number in plain text. The other text
links are useful for navigation, but they only take you eventually
to other Flash content. Thus the page does not really meet accessibility
standards, but the phone link does provide an alternative means
of acquiring the information. So while Flash can provide a really
dynamic navigation experience for the viewer, it can also be
a potential danger. The time needed to make the site accessible
to all needs to be weighed against the advantages.