Roche: Accommodating Flash

Flash Rare appropriate use of Flash animation on a business site home page.

The Site

Roche, the Switzerland-based pharmaceuticals group, has a carefully-designed home page that keeps text to the minimum, while providing a large number of links. The centrepiece is a Flash-driven panel that rotates through several photographic collages. If the computer on which the site is being viewed does not have Flash enabled, one of the collages appears in the home page display as a static picture instead.

The Takeaway

Flash animation can be appropriate for a consumer site, but it rarely is for a business-to-business or corporate home page. Having said that, Roche gets away with using it.

Among reasons to be cautious about Flash here are that it introduces the dimension of time unnecessarily – what busy person is going to sit and watch an animation unfold, rather than moving as quickly as possible to the information they need? For another, it is unfashionable: a few years ago Flash animation was de rigueur. Now it is rather gauche; so Flash tends to be a sign that the site is long in the tooth.

However, Roche’s images are sufficiently carefully chosen to be interesting, and are small enough not to distract from immediate tasks. Most important, the automatic replacement with a static image when Flash is not available is good accessibility practice. The UK’s Royal National Institute of the Blind says that although modern versions of Flash are much better, “we do still advise that accessible alternatives be provided”. It is depressing, given the focus on accessibility, how rarely a static alternative to a Flash graphic is provided. Roche shows how easily it can be.

First published on 04 April, 2006