Is it possible to use variables and triggers to change where focus order "starts"?

Feb 12, 2024

Hello experts and fellow Articulate Storyline users,

I have a client that is very focused on accessibility. They have made a tricky request for interactive screens and I'm not sure there's a way to do this currently but I'm reaching out to see if anyone has any insight. Here's what they want to see.

Say you have an interactive screen that contains three selectable safety features. When a user selects each feature, they get a popup with more information. The interaction is built with slides (not layers) for each popup. In total you'd have four slides for this interaction - the "homepage" of the interaction and then one popup slide for each safety feature. 

How it works now: The user navigates through the homepage slide content, then selects the first safety feature. They go to that safety feature page (which looks/feels like a popup) and navigate through that content. They close that popup slide and return to the homepage slide. They can then choose to navigate through the homepage content again, or can tab directly to the first safety feature, then to the second safety feature to select it, and so on.

This isn't really a big deal with just the three safety features, but if there were nine safety features for example, that would be a lot to navigate through to get to the seventh, eighth, and ninth features.

What they would like to see: Say the user is on safety feature 1 slide. When the user closes safety feature 1 and navigates back to the homepage, the focus would be on safety feature 1 (the safety feature they just returned from). This would be great by the time they got to safety feature 8 for example, and only had to tab once to get to safety feature 9.

Does anyone know of a way to use a variable to track which popup the user is coming from, and use a trigger to say where to start in the focus order list based on that variable's value? Or any other ideas? Thanks!

2 Replies
Sam Hill

Hi Emily,

In order to do this I would recommend using Layers that block access to the Base slide. You can then adjust the focus order of each layer and the Base slide, and you will find that when the Layer is closed/hidden, the focus is returned to the element that triggered the Layer. There is a distinct advantage in using layers this way for accessibility.

I'm happy to take a look at your file and provide an example on one of the features.

Thanks,
Sam