Screen reader not recognizing Storyline 3 module

Oct 06, 2021

Our team had previously published Storyline 3 projects that were able to be recognized and read by Windows Narrator. We use Narrator as a way to pre-test our projects for 508 before sending them off to a certified tester.

Usually, we can tab through an eLearning course and Narrator will read aloud each of the objects on the screen. However, we recently published a course that we had previously published and tested with no issues, but now we cannot select objects using the tab key and Narrator will not recognize all of the objects in the course. The yellow box that highlights objects to read goes from the player menu to the player controls and completely skips over everything on the screen. It will occasionally highlight an object on the screen, but it is sporadic and we cannot find any difference between objects that the reader does and does not select. We made sure that all of the objects that we want visible to a screen reader have been selected as visible in the accessibility option window. Even adding alt text to text boxes does not work.

I checked a Storyline project that we had published to our client's LMS (and that had passed a trusted tester review as well as our initial basic review with Narrator) and I experience similar issues with not being able to tab through the course, where before I was able to.

I have tried Edge, Chrome, and IE browsers.

Any tips on trouble shooting are greatly appreciated. 

1 Reply
Lauren Connelly

Hello Melinda!

I'm happy to help! Are you using all of the keyboard shortcuts to navigate through the course? The TAB key is used to move to the next focusable item, like a button or link. Narrator uses the up/down arrow key to read the next item like a text box or alt text on an image.

Here are the keyboard shortcuts for Narrator.

I'm happy to test your project on my end if you want to upload it to me. You can share the .story file in this discussion or with me personally using my upload link.