AJAX and screenreaders – could Flash make it better?
James Edwards (brothercake) has posted an article on Sitepoint entitled AJAX and Screenreaders: When Can it Work? This article pretty much confirms what a lot of people were thinking: screen readers and AJAX don’t mix at the moment. Is that a reason not to use AJAX?
…unless a way can be found to notify screen readers of updated content, AJAX techniques cannot be considered accessible, and should not be used on a production site without a truly equivalent non-script alternative being offered to users up-front.
Is Flash the UI that could be accessible and AJAX is missing? Flex is looking good given its Flex-Ajax that allows you to expose Flex or an empty SWF’s scripting in the browser. I tend to think for the short term Flash based applications might be the better way for some things if done properly.
Flex has a decent list of accessible components to take a look at but even those have some issues – a lot of the ‘widgets’ work though. Take a look through the Flex accessibility pages and decide for yourself. I am not saying I think Flex has anymore actual use than AJAX (do we really need that much dynamic stuff?) but if you are trying to build a site and an experience, it might be better than AJAX with regards to accessibility for the short term.
I will have to wait until there is an OS X version of a Flex builder to find out for myself 
update: Read Joe Clark’s take on accessible AJAX from his Ice Web 2006 presentation. Also check out his usability test results.