Course audio and screen readers

Jan 13, 2020

Hi all, I'm building a 508 accessible course, and some of our course participants will be using a screen reader, such as JAWS. I want to add course audio for those who just want to be able to listen as well as read the course, but for those using a screen reader, the course would play my sound AND their screen reader would read the alt-text, which would be bad.

Does anyone have a suggestion for the most efficient way to set this up? I'd like to be able to have course audio muted upon entry, and then the participants could click a button to allow the audio to play on all slides if they like. I don't see that this is possible with the standard controls, but perhaps with some custom HTML?

Any suggestions are appreciated. 

5 Replies
Kristin Hatcher

I found the answer in this post from 7 years ago. https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/javascript-to-mute-audio?page=4

You can add a button, and then add a trigger that will execute the JavaScript mentioned in the post above. The audio will play automatically, but will be muted for the whole course when the participant presses the button. I'd actually like it the other way around - start muted and allow audio if the participant wants it, but this is a huge step in the right direction. 

Sally Wiedenbeck

Hi Kristin,

You can also do this with triggers and variables. Create a variable in the course, such as "AudioOn" with a true/false value and default value of false. Add a button on the first screen that when the user clicks, changes the value of AudioOn to true. On future slides, add a trigger to pause the audio at the beginning of the timeline if the AudioOn variable is false. This will have the effect of audio being defaulted to not play, unless the user has turned it on.

Screenshot of a trigger in Storyline 360. Trigger is "Pause audio (audio 1) when timeline starts on (this slide) if AudioOn = value (false)

I would suggest if you use this method, to also add an audio file that plays when the user clicks the button that changes the variable, so they know clicking the button did something. See attached .story file for an example of this method:

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