Screen Reader Functionality Ceased

Any suggestions?  Hints? Is it working with your screen reader?  Please let me know what you may find. 

Hi Bruce,

Thanks for reaching out here - if the courses were previously working and you haven't republished anything in Storyline, I'd first begin by looking at the environments in which you testing. It sounds like you ran through a few different set ups - but did anything change in terms of those set ups and what support they offer for screen readers? For example, I know JAWS only offers support for the latest version of JAWS and IE. 

If you had recently published again in Storyline - do you know if one of the previous courses was published in a different update? Do you know what update you're on now? We're currently on Update 10 of Storyline 2. 

We are using update 10 and older courses and new courses are encountering the same issues. 

A course that was launched on Aug 21 and completed by a user on Aug 26 who uses JAWS found the course responding appropriately.  As a matter of fact he commented that it was extremely easy to navigate.  As of September 2 that course is experiencing the issues as describe in the first posting.

We offer courses using a LMS (D2L) or using a web server and courses on different servers are having identical issues.  The courses are published using either the LMS or Web settings and again both experience the same issues.

I'm not aware of Firefox, Chrome, and IE changing their support for screen readers, but the chances they would all make the same change in the same week seem improbable (but not impossible).

The screen reader issues are the same for NVDA and for JAWS.

Our IT Department looking at this, but I'm curious if anyone else has encountered a sudden failure in screen readers.  I have some general questions for anyone who is developing for or using screen readers:

• Are the courses you are developing working correctly?
• If you visit this linked course:
  • https://collections.uiowa.edu/hr/lad/bdrummon/ferpa/story.html
• does your screen reader work correctly with this course?

If your course works with a screen reader and the course linked above doesn't work at least we can say it is isolated to my environment.

Matthew,

I'm next to positive we are accessing flash content.

It isn't that the content isn't accessible, it is read by the screen reader, but the screen reader isn't functioning normally.  Usually the reader follows the tab order set up in Storyline, but right now the tab order seems to be lost and the reader is reading out buttons and graphics that are not there.  Also it has added an edit command before the navigation buttons.  When you do navigate to and select the next button, rather than delivering you to the top of the tab order on the next/new page it goes directly to the next button on the new page, skipping all of the content.

I will check with ITS about making changes to Flash availability to see if that is what is causing this action.

Thanks

Correct.  The yellow box outlines the active content that the screen reader is accessing.

Clicking on the content screen does open the Flash player menu.  Currently using version 22,0,0,209.

Update - NVDA appears to be working better, but JAWS is still experiencing content tab order disconnects.

Hi Bruce,

Thanks for testing those elements - so it doesn't sound like you changed anything in the course from within Storyline? Is it the same course previously accessed - not updated at all within Storyline? If so, I don't see a way in which the tab order and screen reader accessibility would break across the entire course and within all browsers. You mentioned NVDA is working better now - but JAWS is still having difficulty? 

I tested your course using JAWS 17 and IE11 (which as I understand it JAWS only supports the IE browser) and it worked normally in that I was able to tab and the text boxes were read out normally as I tabbed to them. 

Just wanted to let you know that we are experiencing the same inexplicable problems. JAWS was reading all our lessons fine a couple months ago and now it is not reading Alt Text assigned to buttons/shapes (Windows 10, IE 11) or simply tabbing to items but not reading them--not even simple text boxes (Windows 7, IE 11). I've tried JAWS 18 and JAWS 2018 in the Flash versions of the published lessons. Perhaps some recent Windows Updates have changed things?

We are considering stripping our Word-based storyboards down to just the text for necessary content (body text, critical graphics descriptions, mouse-overs, question text & feedbacks, etc.) and publishing them as PDFs for learners who would otherwise need to use JAWS or another screen reader. We will definitely keep the tab order functionality (which seems to be working fine) for learners without mouse functionality.

Thanks for bringing this up, Debbie. Also, smart idea to open a case. I see that Wilbert has reported this problem as a Storyline 3 bug, and we'll be sure to keep you posted on any developments. 

FYI,
After this week's Windows 7 updates, JAWS was reading most text boxes again (yesterday afternoon).
JAWS is still ignoring the Alt Text for buttons, though. Read as "Unlabeled button" instead.
On shapes that belonged to the same button group, JAWS read "Radio button 1 {or 2, or 3)" instead of the Alt text.

Debbie

Thanks Debbie for that update, and as Alyssa mentioned there is a bug here as well within Storyline 3 where the button's alt text entered in the Tab Order is not read by JAWS. We're taking a look at this and will let you know as soon as we have any other information on it! 

Also, if you're able to track down what occurred with the Windows updates, that would be helpful information as well. 

FYI, I just republished a lesson in the new SL3 (March 7 2018) and tried out the JAWS 2018 reader on my Windows 7 / IE11 machine. JAWS is still ignoring the alt text associated with buttons. For example, on a mouse-over button, instead of reading, “Press spacebar for description of _____,” it says something like “Unlabeled button 26.”

We have already begun creating "508-PDF" versions of our lessons in MS Word to ensure that JAWS/AT-users have a reliable way to read the lesson content.

Hi Debbie,

I'm sorry this issue is still tripping you up - it wasn't something we were able to include in the latest update. We'll let you know here and as a part of your support case once we have any more info to share.