Flash becomes accessible
From: Wired News - April 23, 2002

Macromedia's Flash application is often the tool of choice for developers who
want catchy, animated Web pages, but until recently Flash was inaccessible to
users with disabilities. Until Flash MX was released last month, screen
readers, which make Web page content available to blind users, could not read
Flash content. Even with the new release there was no easy way to add
captions for the deaf. Jason Smith, technical director at the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, wanted to use Flash to build an
educational science site for children but wanted the content to be accessible
for users with disabilities. He built a captioning tool that allows
developers to create caption XML files, which run as part of the animation.
Macromedia has purchased the tool from Smith and will make it available as a
free download within a month. 

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,51638,00.html