Issues with accessibility and JAWS reader

Hi Tina,

What browser (include version) are you using to test with?

Cheers,

Julie 

Hi Julie. I'm using Internet Explorer 11. It's the default browser when opening courses from our LMS.

Hi Tina,

Do you open JAWS first? That's the recommended behavior from JAWS for using within IE (the latest version is all they support). You'll also want to confirm that you're using the latest JAWS Update. The initial bullet point sounds like something with JAWS and not specific to your Storyline course though? 

As for the other two items you mentioned it's something our team would want to take a look at, so can you share a copy of your .story file with us and upload it here? 

Hi Ashley,

Yes, I do open JAWS first. I have version 14.0.9002.

I was first thinking that it's a JAWS issue but when I tried to create a new project with dummy questions, the screen reader was ok. There was no issue. So now, I'm thinking of re-doing the whole thing (which is not fun). I'll try to build a new question bank.

Sorry, I cannot share my file. I work in a highly regulated business so I cannot share any file. But thanks for your offer of help. I will continue to work on finding a solution and hopefully someone does have a solution.

Thanks,

Tina

Hi Tina, 

Hm, I know JAWS is also on the latest update of JAWS 17 I believe, and I don't believe they support anything other than the latest update, and Storyline supports JAWS 16 and later with Internet Explorer 11 and later (Flash output only) which is included in the overall Accessibility support here. 

Since it's just that file that seems to be causing you difficulty, recreating it may be one option, but it could also be worth testing with the latest version of JAWS you can get access too. If you are able to share privately with our Support Engineers they can also sign an NDA. 

Hello Ashley,

Apologies it has taken this long for me to respond. I was able to find the cause of the issues and I would like to share what I found out in case others may encounter the same thing in the future.

Issue #1: Jaws is reading something that is not in my slides. It says: "To skip navigation, hit Enter to return to the slide". I've checked the slides including the master slide for any hidden images but there is nothing.

Solution: I found out that this is not an issue but a functionality Storyline built as a new accessibility feature. The objective is to give the user an option to skip player navigation if they want to. Read here for more.

Issue #2: The quiz questions are all multiple choice questions. Jaws does not read the last answer choice. It just says: "Question X of 8 radio button not checked"

Solution: I had to move this code (Question %QuestionNumber% of 10) up on the page. It was originally at the bottom of the page. For some reason, by putting it at the bottom, the screen reader reads it instead of the last answer choice. This does not seem to be a Jaws reader issue, don't you think?

Issue #3: When I retried the quiz, it did not read the slide right away. It was reading other stuffs when I pressed Tab but I could not see what it was reading.

Solution: I don't know how that happened but when I previewed the course the last time after I have fixed issue #2, it did not happen again.

This is all. Hope this will be helpful to others in the future.

Thanks,

Tina

Thank you for sharing those solutions here, Tina! I'm sure other folks in the community will find this extremely helpful if they run across similar issues in the future. :)