Screen Reader Issues - Focus Order & Web Browser Compatibility

Jan 18, 2021

Trent Hoy
By Trent Hoy

Hello!

I am trying to create a simulation activity that is screen reader accessible, however I am having numerous difficulties getting the experience to work smoothly. I have set up the Focus Order and alt text for all of the elements, however I still experience issues with JAWS and NVDA, both in the Storyline Preview and different web browsers.

Here is a quick breakdown of what I'm experiencing:

JAWS

  • Storyline Preview
    • Reads slide title twice
    • Often skips the first item in Focus Order, both on the base slide and layers
  • Google Chrome
    • Reads hidden web elements (e.g. 4-6 variations of "mobile, slash, slash, a long string of characters" at the beginning of every slide)
    • Reads all slide titles twice
    • Reads the first slide content in the proper Focus Order, but then skips directly to the end of the Focus Order for all subsequent slides.
  • Mozilla Firefox
    • Reads slide title, but will not read anything else on the slide, no matter what I do.

NVDA

  • Storyline Preview
    • Reads file name and slide title, but will not actually read slide content. Using tab navigation, I can get it to navigate between interactables, but it will not read any of the content.
  • Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox
    • Reads the first slide content in the proper Focus Order, but then skips directly to the end of the Focus Order for all subsequent slides.

I am running the latest versions of Storyline, Chrome, and Firefox. Because this is for a proprietary project, I would rather not post the Storyline project file here, though I am happy to share it privately.

Thank you for any insight you may have!

3 Replies
Lauren Connelly
over 3 years ago01/22/21 at 8:15 pm (UTC)

Hi Trent!

Sorry, you're running into this issue with how both NVDA and JAWS are reading your course. 

It would be helpful to see your course and know which version of JAWS and NVDA you are using.

I do want to mention that if you don't begin navigating to anything on the slide, a screen reader will read everything on the screen. If you hear the slide title twice, it sounds like the navigation goes from the Slide Title in the menu to the Slide in the main section. This is expected behavior.

I also want to share that Storyline 360 as an authoring tool isn't fully accessible, so you will run into inconsistencies when previewing. However, it sounds like the bulk of the issues are when you're viewing the course in a browser.

You can share your file privately with me here! I'll let you know when I receive the file and respond with my findings.

Trent Hoy
3 years ago01/25/21 at 2:55 pm (UTC)

Good morning Lauren!

Since the tutorial portion of my simulation is essentially complete, I've separated that out into its own Storyline file and shared it with you at the link provided.

I did some more testing and was able to resolve some of the issues by playing around with the various settings for each screen reader. However, there are two key problems that remain:

  1. When changing slides, the screen reader seems to be placing itself where the last interaction on the prior slide was, rather than recognizing the focus order on a new slide and starting at the top of that list. If nothing is to the right/below where it left off, it jumps to the upper left corner, ignoring focus order. So for many slides, this means the user starts on the “Home/Exit to main menu” button which is actually towards the end of the focus order. (As a potential workaround, I could move that button to the top of the focus order, though experience flow-wise I'd prefer it to remain at the end.)
  2. The screen reader seems to be reading multiple components of what appears to be the player based on the focus highlight, even though all of the player elements and controls are disabled and should be invisible to the user (Modern Player, Menu/Controls Disabled). For example, JAWs reads “mobile slash 6K underscore …” and VoiceOver declares "image" or "unlabeled image." Typically, the screen reader read this on the first slide, then ignores on subsequent pages. However, navigating backwards within later pages will still cause users to encounter these items at the beginning of the focus order.

These two issues do occur in Storyline's preview mode, but are much less frequent/consistent. When using a web browser, however, it happens nearly every time. Perhaps this has to do with how the screen readers engage with software programs versus web browsers?

Here is the detailed information about the screen readers I have tested this with so far:

  • JAWS 2021.2012.57
  • NVDA 2020.3
  • VoiceOver MacOS Catalina 10.15.7

I've also attached my notes on screen reader settings so that you can see exactly what I have adjusted within each one.

Thank you very much for your time and assistance! :)

Sign In to Reply