Screen Reader Issue (keyboard navigation / accessibility)

Apr 13, 2018

Work Account
By Work Account

I have a problem I can’t seem to solve.  I have a slide with an image of a dial on it.  The dial is a button that you can click to move it to 7 different positions (imagine an old tv knob with 7 stations).  It works correctly unless a screen reader is being used.  Here is the behavior I am seeing:

 ·         IE/Flash/NO screen reader – Work as it should.  Press the tab key until the knob has focus and then press enter to activate the button.  It moves the dial to its second position (state) and moves to second layer that still has access to the base objects.  Pressing enter again repeats that same performance and sets the dial to position 3 and shows layer 3. 

·         IE/Flash/Screen reader – Works as it should for the first click but never again.  Press the tab key until the knob has focus and then press enter to activate the button.  It moves the dial to its second position (state) and moves to second layer that still has access to the base objects.  Pressing enter again does NOTHING. 

 I did not test with Chrome because (as of today, and to my best understanding) Chrome does not support JAWS.  I did not test with HTML5 because (as of today, and to my best understanding), HTML5 is only supported in Chrome, and not IE.  So it seems that IE/Flash is the only option I have if I need to create accessible learning. 

 Everything else with my site is working just fine.  It is just this one slide.  I am attaching my .story just in case someone wants to lend a hand.

 Thanks !!!

~ Michael

12 Replies
Crystal Horn
6 years ago04/16/18 at 6:13 pm (UTC)

Hi Michael!  Thanks for sharing that information, and you're correct about support for Storyline 2 accessibility features: Use JAWS (v16 or later) with the Flash output of Internet Explorer.

I made a quick screencast of what I saw, and you can check it out here to make sure I'm understanding the situation.

In summary, I found that even with the screen reader, I could use the space bar or enter key to activate the different layers. I ran into an issue, however, when I tabbed away from the dial on one of the slide layers. Even though I could tab back to the dial, I couldn't regain the original focus and activate the layers.

I'm going to dig into this issue a bit more and document the behavior for my team. If I have any updates to share, I'll let you know. The workaround I could offer for now would be to use separate dials on each layer, rather than state changes of the original dial on the base layer.  I've attached your modified project with that change applied to layers 0, 1 and 2.

Let me know if that works for you!

Work Account
6 years ago04/16/18 at 8:33 pm (UTC)

Thank you for that test Crystal!  You are seeing exactly what I am seeing.  I too thought that the next logical step would be to create a new button on every layer.  I have no logical explanation for why my given solution is NOT working, so if you figure that out I would love to learn.  But I'll give solution 2 a go and see what happens.  Thanks again.

Work Account
6 years ago04/16/18 at 9:42 pm (UTC)

I tested copying the knob to each later.  That worked just as it should.  However, that is a really unacceptable design for accessibility.  The learner would have to cycle through every single object every single time he/she wanted to click the button.  So it would look like:

tab, tab, tab, tab (focus on knob now), enter (shows layer 1)

tab, tab, tab, tab (focus on knob now), enter (shows layer 2) 

tab, tab, tab, tab (focus on knob now), enter (shows layer 3) etc.

The original design was more elegant:

tab, tab, tab, tab (focus on knob now), enter (shows layer 1)

enter (layer 2)

enter (layer 3)

 

So... if anyone has a solution that doesn't require multiple knobs, that would be wunderbar.

~ Michael

Work Account
6 years ago04/16/18 at 10:43 pm (UTC)

Okay... for anyone who may see this in future:  3rd time's a charm.  I used a single knob just as before.  But instead of showing layers, I did show/hide captions.  That seems to both work, and still be convenient to those navigating via keybaord.

Thank you again Crystal.  I REALLY appreciate the support of this group.  

~ Michael

Work Account
5 years ago03/19/19 at 7:54 pm (UTC)

Hi Jenny,

If I remember correctly....

The original design had the content I wanted to show or hide on different layers.  As I clicked the knob, I would show/hide those layers.  That didn't function as it should have done.  The simple fix was to move my content into caption objects and then show/hide those captions.  Look at Insert> Caption.

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