…Ok, not really.

I DID however come across a really great Flash based site that illustrates the difficulty of hearing impairment beautifully.

In short, it’s an exercise aimed at showing someone with good hearing what it is like to have hearing impairment and the daily challenges they face. The funny thing is, as much as I praise this demonstration (beautiful use of contrast and color, visual cues, sound effects), I still have to scold it because it denies many OTHER types of impaired citizens the ability to use and interact with it.
One of my many beefs with Flash is that it isn’t accessible. It CAN be accessible, but rarely, if ever, do Flash developers put in the work to do so (looking at you, Steen.)

For example, if you have a user with poor vision, someone who needs the font size increased, what do you do? In most web browsers you use “Control/Apple” + “+” and the text size is increased. However, in the whatnoise.org site, these controls do not work because the site is Flash based. As gung-ho as that developer was for championing the needs of those with hearing disabilities, coding to include scalable text for the visually impaired was apparently a low priority.

Of course, whatnoise.org wasn’t built for people with accessibility challenges, it was built for people with excellent hearing in order to illustrate how difficult understanding can be without it. In illustrating the challenges hearing impaired individuals face, they are looking to establish an emotional connection and broaden understanding of these challenges.

While it does accomplish this goal, I find it ironic that it sacrifices accessibility overall.