508 Compliance
May 20, 2013
I know that Storyline was built to be 508 Compliant. From my conversation with Articulate's folks, if I enable the "Notes" section on my player, it will be read by JAWS (screen reader) and/or other assistive technologies.
Since I'm creating a course for a Federal Agency, I have to "test" for 508 Compliance and I'm not sure how to do this. Has anyone used Storyline and tested for 508 Compliance? If so, how did you do this? (I don't have access to JAWS or other assistive technologies.)
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!
Patrice
9 Replies
I had to find a vendor using the GSA catalogue. And then send out the bid for it.
Here are the tools we use: https://www.dhs.gov/508-tools
You may want to take the OAST course to learn how to use the tools. You can download a trial version of JAWS and it will work for 20 minutes then you have to restart it but 20 minutes is a long time The inspect tool in the DHS tools will also show you what the text reader will pick up
I know it states with SL2 (build 12) you can automatically turn off the navigation (next, previous, etc) functions from being picked up by a screen reader (which by the way does not read anything by the screen reader). Is there actually a way to make it disappear?
That would not be 508.....you can't have buttons that aren't identified by what they do. If you use the inspect tool it will show you what the screen reader should get when you land on the button.
I witnessed someone actually using their screen reader, and when it reaches the next/previous buttons, nothing is read, and their is no options to add alt-txt to it.
You really need to download those tools I suggested because then you can "see" exactly what is there. I can ask my 508 folks but they were able to name the buttons and it works....not alt text because they are considered buttons NOT images. I suspect the screen reader would say "button" or something like that until you edit the name of the button.
Hi Christian,
I also wanted to point to these articles to help you as you begin designing and testing accessible courses:
JAWS does offer a free trial that you can use to test courses as well. It's a great way to experience exactly what your users who will use screen readers hear and see.
As Ashley mentioned, you can use the free trial of JAWS. The other tools mentioned are good as well. We had someone in our office train to be an official "Trusted Tester" with DHS and they use those various tools to check for compliance. Hard program to pass if anyone is thinking about it. I think the new test comes out in the Fall. Something like 50 hrs of training and you have 3 chances to pass their test to be certified.
Just be careful with alt tags, tabbing order, custom buttons, color contrast, etc. If you're not aware, several features in the program are NOT 508 so you'll need to work around them. Like, the built in hotspots and hyperlinks. You need to add extra objects to get around those. There are some others that are program specific and cannot be fixed. I know for at least one of them I submitted a programming request to Articulate - Storyline's Menu option. It only uses color as an indicator of completion which is not 508 compliant.
Good luck!
I know that I had to use alternate hot keys, since our system does not accept anything in flash only html5. I wish they would fix the navigation buttons to be used for html5.
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