Articulate 360 - Tab Order not recognized by Tab key required for screen readers

Feb 05, 2020

Hello,  

My course is required by law to be ADA compliant.  I just added two updates to Articulate 360 today making it up to date, and after that now the tab key doesn't focus on Tab Order items, but rather the player and buttons only.  The player should never be in focus for the screen reader software, (and is not an item to select in Tab Order), but the selected text boxes should, and they are not.  I have selected text boxes and buttons only as items in Tab Order.  Is this a known issue?  Is there a fix in the pipes?  I checked the tab order in preview, in Review 360 and in our pilot LMS, and all the same.   Thank you.

3 Replies
Vincent Scoma

Hi Gail, 

While more work remains, we're at a point where we're confident the work done so far delivers meaningful real-world improvements for learners with accessibility needs. I've included links below where you can find all the details on the most recent updates for Storyline 360 Update 36:

This release makes it easier for those users to perceive, operate, and understand content published with Storyline, while opening up more choices of browsers, assistive technology, and devices for the first time.

If you have any questions or concerns, please let us know or reach out to our Support team

Rutherford Rankin

Gail, I share your frustration. In the fall, we made significant revisions to an entire portfolio of courses to make them accessible for users with visual impairments. All of our changes were based around the ability to Tab through course content which was how Storyline courses functioned at that time. With these updates, we're finding that users will no longer be able to tab through course objects one-by-one which completely changes the structure of our courses.

While I completely understand the developer's thinking in having all content read at once, that's really not conducive to allowing users control over their experience - in screen reader testing where everything on the slide is being read in sequence without any user input, the user has no control over how fast that information is coming at them. When they were able to tab through each object, they could take a moment between each object to absorb the information before moving on. Now it seems like we're just throwing all of the information at them at high speed and expecting them to keep up, which presents a disadvantage to learners using screen readers. In addition, there are some major bugs with this update like reading the slide title 4-5 times, inability to properly revisit content on the slide, etc., that should never have made it out of a QA process without being noticed.

We spent many, many hours making those changes in the fall and now it looks like we may have to completely restructure our courses once again to make them compatible with the awful update 36.

I also find it extremely frustrating that Storyline staff keep touting these changes as making a real-world improvement when, in fact, they actually make it more difficult for users to learn and navigate courses by removing the user's control over their learning experience.

Ludovic M

In addition, there are some major bugs with this update
 

Hello, we have accessibility needs also and we have made some changes in previous version to solve accessibility problems and now we are looking if everything is accessible with this new player.
So I would know if you have already shared all the bugs you have seen.


e.g.I have a problem with: "Invlaid answer" message box:

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