How can I create accessible e-learning for disabled w Studio 13?

Hi Kirsten.

Here's a great article on what Studio can do to help you meet certain section 508 requirements.

Kristen,

Articulate Studio 13 does not produce content that accessible and meets Section 508 standards despite what they claim. It produces great Flash-based trainings, but when it come to accessible modules, forget it. When you are tying to publish your presentation to HTML5, it will crash each time it comes across an animation or image it doesn't like. It usually takes rebuilding your presentation slide by slide and tying to publish after each one is rebuilt. It is time consuming and very frustrating. One of the major reasons that Articulate Studio 13 is not compliant is the fact that keyboard shortcuts are not supported. They claim the final module will support keyboard shortcuts if a certain box is checked in the player setup, but even with the specified box checked none of the keyboard shortcuts they advertise work. I have tried using the shortcuts in IE 10, FireFox, and Google Chrome and nothing happens.

I'm really surprised that Articulate does not provide real customer service/support. Instead they send us to this forum where nobody is able to provide appropriate answers. Instead of helping and answering customer inquiries, all they do is refer you to a "great article" that tells you nothing that you need to know. And as you can see, the forum staff seem to have no experience using Articulate.

I work as a training specialist in state government and have contact with other trainers across many different agencies. As far as I know, nobody has been able to produce a 100% accessible training module using any of the Articulate products. We were hoping that Update 3 would have taken care of the keyboard issue, but it did not. At this point, we are giving up on Articulate and it is no longer approved for purchase by our agency.

Hi Bryan.

Thanks for the post and sorry to hear that you are frustrated. I am the Director of Customer Support here at Articulate and I will be happy to help explain some things for you and hopefully point you in the right direction so you can get the help you need.

If you are having issues publishing, I would suggest reviewing this article which outlines some possible solutions for you. If the article does not resolve your issue, feel free to send us your project files and we will be happy to take a closer look. I have personally reviewed hundreds of project files and I have never had to rebuild slides by slides to get a presentation to publish so I would be curious if the steps in the article help you out.

If you are finding that keyboard shortcuts do not work, I would first make sure that the Player you have selected in the Publish wizard has the keyboard shortcuts option checked. It is possible that the player you are editing is not the player that the presentation is using to publish. I just tested a simple presentation and the keyboard shortcuts appear to be working fine.

Articulate does indeed provide technical support for all of our customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year except for Christmas and New Year's. You can review how we support our customers here. You can always submit a case here.

All of my staff is trained in our products. I have been with the company for ten years and have personally provided support for thousands of cases and thousands of forum threads. I know my team does a great job in the forums and behind the scenes on cases every day. As does our very active user community. I am sorry that your experience based on your one post was different from that and we would be happy to help you work through any of the issues you are experiencing via the forums or via a case.

Hi Justin,

Thanks for your reply. I've read the article and still have two questions:

1) How can I ensure that text (headers, lists, normal text) on a slide will be read in the right sequence of e.g. a JAWS screen reader?

2) I guess the only quiz format that might be accessible is a simple multiple choice-format. If so, anything special I need to do in order to ensure accessibility when creating the quiz?

Justin,

Thanks for your response. I have read every document Articulate has available in this forum, and they usually don't help. As to having to rebuild each slide, the article you referenced says that rebuilding each slide is required when none of the other solutions work.

As to the customer service provided by Articulate, it is not customer friendly, First off, membership to this forum is required. Why should a customer be forced to join a forum to get help? In order to get help via phone, Articulate's policy to which you directed me says that phone support is available for a per incident fee. Why should customers have to pay for help? I could go on, but I keep my ranting to myself.

I have tried publishing small test modules as you recommended, but the keyboard shortcuts do not work in the HTML5 pages. I launched your simple presentation in both Firefox and Chrome and the keyboard shortcuts did not work, however they did work in IE 10. Have you tried using Firefox or Chrome with the presentation you posted? If so, did they work?

Or Division is required to ensure that all training is 100% compliant to Section 508 across all browsing platforms. I've yet to test Articulate on any Apple systems, tablets or phones. I would be happy to continue using Articulate, I've used it ever since it was released; but if it does not easily produce 100% accessible trainings the State will no longer allow its use.

I do have a small course that I've published as both Flash and HTML5. I will submit to see if anyone there can figure out what is going on. But like I mentioned earlier, the simple presentation you posted did not support keyboard shortcuts in Firefox nor Chrome.