Making a course with narration Accessible

Aug 09, 2022

First of all please forgive this lengthy post. I have been asked to make a course accessible but I lack expertise in this area. I am currently using version 66 of Storyline 360, and in the player I have turned on the volume, play/pause, accessibility controls, captions and the seek bar.

I am taking over the development of a course that has narration on every slide, with text objects that appear in sync with the audio. I have spent many days digging through websites and watching webinars, including the ones posted here, and there are some conflicting recommendations out there have me confused. I’m hoping someone here can clarify a few things for me.

  1. In order to avoid having the narration play at the same times as the screen reader, should the timeline be paused at the beginning of each slide, or is it reasonable to assume that screen reader users will pause the slide on their own at the beginning of each slide using the keyboard shortcuts?
  2. Am I allowed to keep the slide objects (such as bullet points) in sync with the audio or should everything appear at the beginning of the slide to accommodate screen readers?
  3. I have added captions to the audio track, but should I still make the narration script available in the Notes panel or perhaps in a text box off stage?
  4. If I am to use the Notes panel: There are some slides that have narration on the base layer as well as narration on the slide layers, but there is no separate Notes panel for each layer. Can I keep the structure as is, with the entire script on the notes panel, or should I convert the layers into separate slides with corresponding script in each Notes panel?
  5. There are also course-specific keyboard shortcuts on some slides for users with motor disabilities. They are represented in the underlined letter in the interactivity, for instance “Example” opens up the example layer (in the trigger panel: Show layer “Example” when user presses E after clicking on this slide). Unfortunately these keyboard shortcuts don’t work when JAWS is running, it says “There are no headings on this page.” but there are hotspots with alt text for these objects to trigger the layers. Should this be simplified or is this type of activity acceptable?
  6. Finally the instruction to press “Shift + ?” to access the list of keyboard shortcuts doesn’t work when JAWS is running, instead it says “There are no clickable elements on this page.” But I found that “Shift+Windows+?” does work. Do I need to tell JAWS users the work-around or is this already common knowledge? Similarly I found a thread here that mentions switching between Browse and Focus by pressing “Insert + Spacebar”, which does work with NVDA but does not with JAWS. Is this also common knowledge or do I need to give NDVA users these instructions? I’m not sure how to proceed if the learner uses a screen reader and has motor disabilities.

Thanks in advance for any tips or suggestions!

3 Replies
Jose Tansengco

Hello Marie-Claude,

Thanks for reaching out!

Since your inquiry is design related, I'll leave it to the talented members of our community who I'm sure will have some suggestions that they can share based on their experiences. In the mean time, we have this helpful article on how you can design your course in Storyline 360 to make it accessible: 

The article includes how to make audio and video content accessible among other suggestions that you can apply to your course.  

Hope this helps!

Amie Cox

Hi Marie-Claude,

We are currently revamping all of our eLearning modules to be accessible to come into compliance with the new Federal laws as well, and item #4 that you mentioned above (having a separate Notes area for layers) has been a HUGE pain point. We have well over 200+ modules to fix and I wish Articulate would hear us about this issue! Sadly, we may have to move to other creation platforms that include the ability to separate written text out in order to come into compliance. We cannot risk the chance of being fined or sued because our content is not fully accessible, and not being able to have layers because we can't add separate Notes to them is part of being compliant! Good luck to you in your development creations. 

Lauren Connelly

Hi Amie!

I'm so appreciative that you took the time to share your feedback and need for notes on layers! We created a feature request and added everyone's voice to it. Our team will take a look to see how this feature fits within our current roadmap and keep you updated if it makes it in an upcoming release. I'm sorry this has been such a pain point, but your feedback is in the right hands!