23 January 2007

sIFR

sIFR stands for Scalable Inman Flash Replacement.

At first I thought this was meant to be a replacement for flash, but it turns out to be a way to replace text in the browser with a flash movie that shows an image of the text in whatever font you choose. The font doesn't need to be installed so the page will always appear exactly as designed.

It seems like rather a Heath-Robinson approach, but the idea is to improve accessibility without sacrificing the design. The text is still there, accessible to screen readers and search engines.

I think it's a better approach than using images, even with Alt tags.

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