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The Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) have provided guidance on how to make flash banners (the typical animated adverts that you see all over the web) accessible to those using screen readers.
The advice can be found here: http://www.rnib.org.uk/wacblog/flash/accessible-flash-banner-ad-guidelines/.
The advice can equally apply to the kind of animated fade-in, fade-out of text and images that is often seen on homepages.
However, we should still be mindful that there are many other reasons why a Flash-based banner might still be inaccessible. Guideline 7.3 of the WCAG 1.0 accessibility guidelines states"Movement: Until user agents allow users to freeze moving content, avoid movement in pages. Priority 2.”. To meet the guideline, you need to provide a way to stop your flash animation.
If this would be aesthetically compromising, you need to consider meeting Guideline 11.4 - “If, after best efforts, you cannot create an accessible page, provide a link to an alternative page that uses W3C technologies, is accessible, has equivalent information (or functionality), and is updated as often as the inaccessible (original) page. Priority 1” - and producing a non-flash equivalent.