Adobe Flash

A discontinued multimedia software platform formerly used to create animations, rich internet applications, games, and video players embedded in web pages. Flash content was notoriously inaccessible to screen readers and other assistive technologies because the Flash Player plugin was closed-source and provided limited accessibility hooks. Despite years of efforts to improve Flash accessibility, content remained largely opaque to assistive technologies that relied on the browser's Document Object Model. Adobe ended Flash Player support in December 2020, and modern web standards (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript) have replaced its functionality with more accessible alternatives.