Do you need to enter Alt Text in a Multiple Choice Question?

Jul 02, 2013

Hi,

I want to make sure my application is accessible to screen readers. When I create a multiple choice interaction, do I need to enter Alt Text under the "Size and Position"? Or will it pick up the text entered for the interaction for screen readers automatically?

I really need to know! Thanks!

4 Replies
Leslie McKerchie

Hi Dane! With a proper screenreader (JAWS) for instance, this should work seamlessly.  See this article for details. I will mention that if you want the screen reader to use a name or description that's different from the selected object on the timeline, you would need to use Alt Text and this article explains that. I hope that helps

Dane Boyington

Hi,

Thanks for the info. But my understanding is that this is not totally true for text boxes. For instance, the book "Articulate Storyline" by Elkins and Pinder specifically says that text boxes will read the screen text in the box to the screen reader (pg. 68). This is a logical feature in that it makes it easier by not requiring the author to copy the text to the Alt Text dialog every time the text is edited.

It would make sense that other objects that serve as text containers would do the same if the Alt Text entry was null. This would make it much easier to create 508-compliant lessons and keep them up to date.

Can you confirm what Elkins and Pinder believe, and if it extends to multiple choice questions also? I don't have a screen reader set up to test it.

Thanks.

Justin Grenier

Good Afternoon, Dane.

Although every screen reader is different, as the article that Leslie provided explains, screen readers will generally announce each object on the slide according to the object names on the Storyline timeline.

Having said that, our team just briefly tested this published output in IE 10/JAWS 14 and found that JAWS picked up the question and the answer choices without entering any Alt Text.  Go JAWS!

Dane Boyington

Thank you for confirming this. What I was not seeing before is that:

- Text boxes copy its content to the name on the timeline automatically

- If you expand the group for a multiple choice interaction on the timeline, you can also see that the distractor buttons also copy their text to the timeline object names.

However you can't rely on this for all types of interactions, for instance I don't think that the timeline names are all filled out for drag and drop.

Thank you for helping with this!

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