Accessibility Tips for the Modern Player
Aug 19, 2020
I'm transitioning from SL3 to SL360, and excited to use the Modern Player. Since we're in a government setting, we need products to be fully accessible. Very glad to see all the recent effort Articulate is putting into accessibility.
Does the Modern Player meet WCAG 2.1 AA? What are some tips for ensuring an accessible experience? Here are a few tips that I'm picking up from our initial testing and from the forums here:
- Use the Dark player theme. The Light player theme does not meet color contrast requirements. (From my testing, the text in the Dark theme meets color contrast requirements, but this post suggests that there might be some interface elements that do not?)
- Don't use the Logo in the player. There is currently no alt text for the logo image. (I put in a feature request.)
- Set Button Style (under Colors & Effects in Player settings) to "Icon and text". The Prev/Next chevrons alone are not read properly by screen readers.
Are those accurate? What else should we be doing? Thank you for any other ideas or guidance!
5 Replies
Hi Michael!
I'm so glad you're excited about our recent Accessibility changes! I can assure you that we have more in store.
Those are great tips! I appreciate you sharing them.
We are currently looking at this exact issue with the Modern Player because it doesn't currently pass the color contrast guidelines. I'll make sure we update this discussion when we have more information to share.
We have several resources on how to design an accessible course, so I'll link those here.
How to Design an Accessible Course
Articulate 360 FAQs: Accessibility
Thank you, Lauren. Looking forward to any updates on this topic!
Hi, Michael.
I have great news to share!
We just released another update for Storyline 360. In Update 50, we’ve included important fixes and new features.
One of the features we’ve included is:
The modern player meets WCAG accessibility guidelines for visual contrast and color so all learners can read the text, decipher the icons, perceive the controls, and navigate easily. Learn more about modern player accessible contrast.
To take advantage of this update, launch the Articulate 360 desktop app on your computer and click the Update button next to Storyline 360. You'll find our step-by-step instructions here.
Please let us know if you have any questions by posting here or by reaching out to our Support Engineers directly.
Thank you, Maria, for sharing this information. I'm glad to see this crucial update to the modern player. We are excited to test it out. Thanks!
Can you clarify what elements of the modern player you're still working on in terms of accessibility? For example, the logo image doesn't appear to have alt text -- is that something that will be addressed? Are there other issues we should be aware of?
Hi Michael!
We have logged the option to add alt text to logos as a feature request. We don't currently have it slated on our roadmap, but I'll let you know in this discussion when we do.
Regarding what we are currently working on, you can bookmark our feature roadmap to stay up to date on upcoming accessibility improvements!