Does all content need to be at start of timeline (sreen readers)?

Aug 20, 2020

I attended a webinar on Storyline accessibility. They said that anything that does not appear at the very START of the timeline won’t be read out to a screen reader. You have to copy all this content off the slide (hidden but you are repeating it at the start of the timeline, this makes it readable). This applies to anything animating in or appearing anywhere past the absolute start of the timeline.

Does anyone have experience with this? It's a lot of work to copy all content off screen and this means 2 places to edit in the future. Is it possible this was a method with earlier versions of Storyline 360? Do we still have to do this?

2 Replies
Euan Hill

Hi Vanessa,

This isn't true. Screen readers can read content that animates in later on a slide, but you have to be conscious of the Tab Order and how quickly the screen reader might run through the course.

For example, if you have two text boxes and they're in the correct tab order. Text box one is read out by the screen reader first and text box two must have animated onto the screen by the time text box one has been read. If it still hasn't animated in the text will be skipped by the screen reader.

If we have a lot of running animations through a slide that might not enter in time for a user making their way through text on a screen reader, we sometimes add a "skip animation" hidden button at the top of the tab order that can be used to skip ahead in the timeline and have all text appear for a screen reader's purpose.

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