Heading Tags/Screen Reader Accessibility
Aug 13, 2021
Hi,
I am building a course for a client at work which I cannot share the files of, but I am currently working on setting up a course for accessibility purposes.
However I am running into issues with heading tags requested by the user testing for us using JAWS.
The first issue is that the heading styles aren't been seen by the screen readers.
I had seen that using the heading styles should enable screen readers to navigate through levels of headers, however this isn't the case. When observing the user test after implementing this to all title text on slides, the JAWS screen reader doesn't pick up any headings/header styles at all on any of the slides. Despite there being at least one on each slide.
I don't know what is causing this to happen, I have all text upgraded to modern from the design tab and each item on all of the slides are set up to have their alt text and every object is visible to accessibility tools.
Question 1: Can any insights be provided into why the heading text styles are not being picked up by JAWS?
My second issue/query is that when the course title is enabled it does get read by the screen reader as "Heading level 1". This is good, but for our course we have this toggled off to prevent the course title from being read on every single slide.
When this is toggled off the screen reader defaults to reading the title of each slide instead as the user navigates onto it, which is ideal. However, when these titles are being read by JAWS it reads out as "Slide: Title of slide". Ideally we would like the "Heading 1: " or "Heading 2:" functionality to read here instead of "Slide:"
Question 2: Can the titles in the player be displayed like this? Is this a feature that I can already implement or could it be marked for future updates?
6 Replies
Welcome to E-Learning Heroes, Corey! ⭐️
Great call on getting a case opened with our support team. I see Cleo grabbed your case and is looking into it as I type! We'll reach out in your case soon with the next step!
@Corey Ashley Have you got any solution to this? I am also facing the same issue.
Hi Parashuram,
I'd recommend opening a case with our team so we can take a closer look at your project file. We've released a few versions since this post was created, so getting you in touch with a support engineer will ensure that we're testing everything on the most recent versions of the applications involved. Your case will be in good hands with our support engineers!
Thanks Joe,
I got this issue sorted out, there was some alt text over-writing which was
causing the issue.
Warm Regards,
*Parashuram Vhaval *
Graphic design and eLearning expert
Hi
I would be interested in hearing if the original request was resolved and how? I have two queries around this:
1. I am creating accessible content and have three text boxes with the fonts as Heading 2 but jaws does not read this out as a heading. (I have updated my fonts).
2. How do I signpost the user back to the heading to read the layer content sitting behind?
Thanks.
Dorothy
Hi Dorothy,
Sorry to hear that you ran into this snag.
I can confirm that on my end, using JAWS 2021 allowed me to hear the narrations for the headings. This is the text that was narrated back to me by JAWS:
Heading level <header number> <actual text>
And here's a link to the published output that I used for testing:
https://360.articulate.com/review/content/d74d7745-595e-4514-a400-359b51bd691b/review
I've attached the sample file that I used so you can check how the text boxes were added. Would you mind accessing my link with JAWS running and letting me know if you hear the same narration? Please use the up and down narrow keys for the text.
As for the signpost, you can check out this article on how to design accessible courses in Storyline 360: