I've seen a few complaints about this on eLearning heroes but am hoping someone on the official Articulate section will know.
Accessibility requires keyboard only navigation, and thanks to the latest update, the key press trigger requires that the user click on something. This seems like backwards functionality from the direction the world is headed (where accessibility is more and more required) and breaks my accessible lessons. Has anyone found a workaround?
I'm hoping that someone has solved keyboard accessibility in an easy fashion? Whatever the workaround is, I have to then teach it to the rest of my company...
You can invoke the old trigger wizard in the options for Storyline. I don't believe the trigger has changed, but its function has been made more obvious with the added object. You can set the object to the slide, however, the key press trigger has always needed the slide to have focus to work.
Often the player takes focus when you change slides. There is a way to force each slide to have focus by using a data entry field.
I may be wrong but this is a long-standing issue, that hopefully gets addressed in the future.
Ah, but there is a difference between "clicking on the slide" (which is what the trigger says it requires, and which requires a mouse) and "the slide has focus", as you say (can be done with tab keyboard navigation). I'll experiment. Thanks!
Thanks so much for reaching out in E-Learning Heroes regarding accessibility. While more work remains, I wanted to point you in the direction of our latest enhancements as we believe it delivers meaningful real-world improvements for learners with accessibility needs. I've included links below where you can find all the details on what this means for Storyline 360 Update 36:
This release makes it significantly easier for those users to perceive, operate, and understand content published with Storyline, while opening up more choices of browser, assistive technology, and devices for the first time. Learners will benefit from the vast majority of these improvements, even when the course author is not designing their course for accessibility.
If you have any questions or concerns, let us know here or reach out to our Support team. We know there is more to do, so we'll continue to keep you posted about future releases.
My group is still debating whether the enhancements noted above make keyboard tabbing sufficiently accessible. When we test our courses using the keyboard, the tab order/highlighted areas are not in sync with the tab order in the .story file. I think the explanations in the links for Update 36 make it clear accessibility is better now, but that's not the consensus among my colleagues. We haven't been publishing courses with updated versions because they think it's a bug that needs fixing. It hasn't helped that we can't get a definitive answer from Articulate reps. Are we, or are we not, in full compliance with keyboard accessibility standards if we publish courses using the most updated version of Articulate 360? I believe the answer is yes, but we can't move forward unless everyone is convinced.
I did a quick search for other forum conversations or cases and I did find one for a colleague of yours. The documentation I shared above explains that our experience matches what a screen reader user would expect now, which includes using up/down arrows paired with tabbing.
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You can invoke the old trigger wizard in the options for Storyline. I don't believe the trigger has changed, but its function has been made more obvious with the added object. You can set the object to the slide, however, the key press trigger has always needed the slide to have focus to work.
Often the player takes focus when you change slides. There is a way to force each slide to have focus by using a data entry field.
I may be wrong but this is a long-standing issue, that hopefully gets addressed in the future.
Ah, but there is a difference between "clicking on the slide" (which is what the trigger says it requires, and which requires a mouse) and "the slide has focus", as you say (can be done with tab keyboard navigation). I'll experiment. Thanks!
Hi Susi,
Thanks so much for reaching out in E-Learning Heroes regarding accessibility. While more work remains, I wanted to point you in the direction of our latest enhancements as we believe it delivers meaningful real-world improvements for learners with accessibility needs. I've included links below where you can find all the details on what this means for Storyline 360 Update 36:
You'll also find our general FAQ on accessibility in Articulate 360 tools here.
This release makes it significantly easier for those users to perceive, operate, and understand content published with Storyline, while opening up more choices of browser, assistive technology, and devices for the first time. Learners will benefit from the vast majority of these improvements, even when the course author is not designing their course for accessibility.
If you have any questions or concerns, let us know here or reach out to our Support team. We know there is more to do, so we'll continue to keep you posted about future releases.
My group is still debating whether the enhancements noted above make keyboard tabbing sufficiently accessible. When we test our courses using the keyboard, the tab order/highlighted areas are not in sync with the tab order in the .story file. I think the explanations in the links for Update 36 make it clear accessibility is better now, but that's not the consensus among my colleagues. We haven't been publishing courses with updated versions because they think it's a bug that needs fixing. It hasn't helped that we can't get a definitive answer from Articulate reps. Are we, or are we not, in full compliance with keyboard accessibility standards if we publish courses using the most updated version of Articulate 360? I believe the answer is yes, but we can't move forward unless everyone is convinced.
Hey Carole,
Yes. I think this article may break it down a bit better regarding the navigation.
Simon recently shared an update as well:
Recent accessibility improvements in Storyline 360
I did a quick search for other forum conversations or cases and I did find one for a colleague of yours. The documentation I shared above explains that our experience matches what a screen reader user would expect now, which includes using up/down arrows paired with tabbing.
This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.