Best practices for custom keyboard shortcuts?

Oct 25, 2018

Lesley Mizer
By Lesley Mizer

Hi there, I've added keyboard shortcuts to my Articulate Storyline 360 course to enhance the accessibility:

  • Left and right arrow keys for Previous and Next slides
  • Spacebar for play and pause

However, they don't work unless the focus is on the slide, and the focus is not on the course player (i.e., when I tab to the course player features-menu tab, seek bar, etc., these features don't work until I've navigated back to the slide). I have a slide that explains the shortcuts, but it sounds too confusing to say, "the left and right arrow keys will advance to the previous and next slides when the focus is on the slide and not the course player."

So, is there a better way to explain it, or is it too confusing to have these shortcuts at all? Is it appropriate in terms of accessibility to tab to the course player Previous and Next buttons to advance for every slide? To tab until I get to the play/pause button to play/pause? Or, is it still better to have these keyboard shortcuts even if they kind of work? 

I appreciate your suggestions.

 

1 Reply
Reynaldo Galang
over 5 years ago11/21/18 at 12:49 pm (UTC)

Hi Lesley,

Thanks for sharing this. Yes keyboard shortcuts are quite necessary and makes you efficient, increase productivity and precise instead of using a mouse.

Storyline 360 was designed so that the learner would see all the slides or every bit of information within a course (e.g. Compliance training) thus skipping slides are barred if this is your first time going through the content. The reason for this is that certain industries, compliance training is a legal requirement and if a learner/company can’t prove he/she has indeed seen every single piece of content in the course, they could be deemed non-compliant and could be liable.

Keep in mind that each Storyline 360 course is only locked the first time you go through the slides. Once you watched it the first time, you can go back and review the contents using the seekbar, your keyboard shortcuts and play/pause button.

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