New in Storyline 360: Accessible Text Styles
Jul 21, 2020
We’ve just added another great feature to Storyline 360: accessible text styles. Text styles gave you a faster, easier way to control the visual appearance of slide text in your Storyline 360 projects—and now accessible text styles allow you to provide more context to learners using screen readers.
Here’s how it works:
Click the new Text Styles button (located on the Home ribbon) and choose a text style to instantly apply to headings or subheadings, or define and apply your own custom text styles.
When you want to make changes to the style of Heading1, for instance, edit the text in one place and click the Text Styles button. Then mouse-over Heading1 on the Text Styles drop-down and click “Update from Selection.” And that’s it! You’ve instantly updated the text styling throughout your project. Here’s a .GIF to walk you through these steps:
Text styles give your productivity a nice boost, and now that text styles are accessible, you can empower learners who use screen readers to more easily navigate headings, links, lists, quotes, and other text elements on your slides.
For example, if you apply Heading1 style to the text “Let’s Practice,” now screen readers will hear “Heading level 1 let’s practice,” which gives them a clearer picture of the content that sighted users get by looking at the screen.
Did you know that most experienced screen reader users first explore headings and links to understand the layout of a page? With this update, they now have the flexibility to use screen reader shortcuts to jump to the content they want to read, just like sighted users.
You can even create or rename custom text styles to something your learners will recognize for greater clarity.
We’ve made another accessibility enhancement for text in Storyline 360: the ability to customize hyperlink states (e.g., normal, hover, active, and visited). Much like text styles, this helps you maintain a consistent design across your project while also providing more distinction for learners with low vision.
In short, text styles give you a faster, easier way to control the visual appearance of slide text in your Storyline 360 projects. And now that text styles have been made accessible, they also provide more context to learners who use screen readers.
Want to learn more about text styles and hyperlink states in Storyline 360? Check out these helpful resources:
93 Replies
I haven't updated or tested yet -- waiting until this project is complete.. But reverting is easy. Open Articulate 360 (Blue 'a' icon) You'll see all the applications listed. Hover your mouse to the left of open for the application you want to revert. A little down arrow will appear. Click the arrow and Select 'Other Versions...'
Just updated to the latest version of Storyline - everything looks ok so far
Thanks Tracy,
I will feel more secure now when making the "big leap."
Do these styles save Paragraph settings? I don't seem to be able to save my spacing settings to a style -- they keep reverting to some other figure when I change slides.
Hi Douglas,
I just responded to your forum conversation here regarding this specific issue.
Just wanted to link it up for anyone following along and we can continue our conversation there.
'Course completions and quiz scores weren't recorded in an LMS when the player was set to launch in a new window.'
Has this issue been resolved yet? Patiently waiting as we have to republish a lot of our older courses that were 'flash' :) Hoping to accomplish two tasks at the same time. (Flash and completion issue)
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Hi Tracy - Yes, the course completion trigger issue was resolved in the July 24, 2020 (Build 3.42.22734.0) release to Storyline 360.
Just wanted to chime in with my issue with the new text style 'feature'. Wow, I had no idea this was such a badly implemented update until just now looking at this thread. I'm still trying to figure out if all these issues have been decreed resolved by the Articulate staff because there are A LOT of issues I have encountered over the last few days having started to experiment with it on a new build.
I am on the latest build and I have noticed that after converting all my headers to a newly defined style (28pt line spacing) they look great in Storyline and all is good. Until I preview and can see that the heading line spacing is all out of whack (increased to about 70 px).
What's worse is that it is so random. Not every slide has the horrible 70pt line spacing.
Glitch.
But then when I click into the heading boxes, the text automagically 'squishes', and squishes if I click out and then back in again. So, accidentally clicking on a text box can dramatically alter the line spacing for some reason.
This is a major glitch.
There were a few other things as well I have noticed but I do not have the time to document them - like some text, whether headings or body text, seem to have a 0.1" indentation, for no reason, etc, etc, etc...
Hello Diarmaid!
It sounds like you're seeing two snags that haven't been reported yet. We haven't seen issues with the line spacing getting bigger rather than smaller, and I don't see that anyone has reported indentation issues with text.
I've notified our team of these recent issues and they're interested in testing out your project. I've started a case on your behalf and sent over an upload link. Please let me know if you haven't received my email yet.
Thank you for taking the time to share these details with us!
Hi Lauren, thanks for the reply. I have received your email and will prep a file for supply ASAP.
But, just to clarify, of the 3 items I have highlighted, you haven't encountered 2.
So does that mean the "text squishing as you click on the text box" is a known issue?
Hi Diarmaid!
It looks like our team is still waiting on your file.
Yes, we've already logged the issue where the line spacing shrinks when clicking on a text box.
Once we receive your file, we'll begin troubleshooting in your support case.
Apologies. Sidetracked. Done.
Here's another file for the team to view. I styled some hexagonal shapes to behave as buttons. I formatted the text (DIN Condensed, 12pt and 12pt exact line spacing with a 10pt margin). I decided to tie the style to one of the custom styles for use on later slides.
When previewed, buttons 1, 2, and 4 all shift perceptibly on hover, but in different directions!
When I click on the hover states of each (and simply ignore the line squishing issue that has now caused) I can see no discernable difference in any values specified above.
I then decide to duplicate button 1 to see if I can reset the shape characteristics and click the 'change shape' option. When I do, an identical shape suddenly pops directly in front (on top of the timeline unbeknownst to me) which I proceed to style and edit to test out.
When I click Preview, I get the ubiquitous Error message and I have to click cancel. Preview will not work again, and I have to quit and restart.
I then realise there's the new (unknown shape) which, when deleted, allows me to preview the slide.
Lots of things going on here - possibly none related to the text style issues directly - but it would be a great idea if we could have an option to remove any association to a style. Not a 'reset' but more of an 'unlink'
Hi Diarmaid!
We've received your file! Our team is taking a look and will continue the conversation in your support case.
Will this update stop Storyline from installing conflicting versions of fonts on my system? I regularly have to check my system fonts folder and remove Storyline's versions of fonts as they don't display properly.
Hi Nathan!
It sounds like you have something different in mind for us to add to Storyline 360! The text styles feature doesn't install fonts but instead gives you the option to assign the font and style to text quickly.
I'd love to hear more about what you're looking for in regards to a fix for conflicting versions of fonts. Would you mind sharing more about how this occurs? Connect with us here!
Can the text styles be applied to Notes? It would be good to be able to apply a custom text style to Notes or have a text style specific to Notes.
If you do create a Notes text style, be sure to only apply this to old projects that have not customized each slides formatting in anyway.
I have created one project with "TEXT STYLES", in articulate storyline 360 the same source file not opening in "Storyline 3" latest version. My customer uses only storyline 3 in their organization.
Any solution to this issue?
Hi Mohan,
Text Styles is not currently compatible with Storyline 3. A future update for Storyline 3 will restore compatibility so you can open Storyline 360 project files that have text styles.
In the meantime, you can make a Storyline 360 project file compatible with Storyline 3 by resetting all text styles to their defaults and applying the Normal Text style to all text objects in the project (including slide masters).
See our Compatibility Between Storyline 360 and Storyline 3 Project Files article here.
Hi Bret jorensen,
Thank you for your quick response.
Any tentative launch on updated storyline 3 with "Text Styles.
Then we will share source files with my customers.
Hello Mohan!
Great question. Text styles are exclusive to Storyline 360 as part of the continuous enhancements that roll out with an Articulate 360 subscription.
We don't have plans to add this feature to Storyline 3 at this time, but we'll let you know if that changes!
awesome!! :D
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