Keyboard Navigation: Tab to the Seekbar play button first?

May 15, 2019

Has anyone discovered a way to set the Seekbar play button as the first object in the tab order?

8 Replies
Jopney Test Sotomayor

Hi Onoda,

This tutorial confirms that "You can't customize the tab order of player navigation elements, but you can skip them when you're tabbing through a slide with a screen reader."

I am certain that this feature will be helpful to you so feel free to drop a product feature request here!

Thanks,

Jopney

Onoda Sakamichi

Thank you for your reply.

My customer has requested keyboard navigation—but not for accessibility purposes—and for the audio to play only when the user selects the play button on the seekbar.

What I wanted to do was have the seekbar as the first item highlighted when pressing the TAB key and subsequent presses would navigate through the slide content.

If the seekbar was not a requirement, this would be simple.

Jopney Test Sotomayor

Hi Onoda,

Unfortunately, the only way to control the behaviour of the tab key is through the 'tab order' option I mentioned in my comment above. 

A basic workaround, if your client permits, is to put an object within your slide that will queue the audio once selected. Since this object is within the slide, you can now set it as #1 in the tab order.

Your requirement is interesting so let's keep this open. There are a lot of heroes in this community and let's hope someone will share the magic.

Good luck on your project!

- Jop

 

Peter Ward

My customer (the U.S. Government) is asking for this as well. Their 508 Compliance tester said, "for auto-playing content, the pause button is supposed to be located within the first three elements on a page that a user encounters using the keyboard. In order to make the navigation compliant, can you please update the tab order?"

Since this is a 508 Compliance concern, and Storyline is supposed to be 508 Compliant, please fix this ASAP.

Lauren Connelly

Hi Peter!

I'm happy to share this information with our team! 

I'd love to clarify which set of standards your compliance tester is using so I can share those details with our team. Currently, 508 compliance doesn't have guidelines on where a pause or play control needs to appear in the tab order. I can see where it would be beneficial for specific controls to be within the first three elements, but those won't interfere with overall compliance. 

I appreciate you sharing what is essential in your course! I'll be sure to relay the information to our team.

Lauren Connelly

Thank you so much Peter!

It looks like the guidelines from the CIO Council are more strict than Section 508 and WCAG 2.0. 

Both 508 and WCAG standards address audio control guidelines but they don't include details on the specific placement. 

For example, here's WCAG's success criterion:

  •  1.4.2 Audio Control The control to turn off the sounds should be located near the beginning of the page to allow the control to be easily and quickly discovered by users. 

After reading the pdf, it looks like there are additional guidelines your 508 Compliance tester has included in their testing. I've passed this information onto our team so that we are aware of additional compliance tests that may be used. 

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