Screen Readers and Variable Text

Hi Michael!  JAWS is the only officially supported screen reader for Articulate output.  Here are the details for Storyline 360: 

I did a quick test with JAWS using IE 11 and Chrome, both HTML5 and Flash output, and JAWS read the variable text.

Thank you for those tests Crystal!  That was very kind of you.  Upon further testing I have found that if I use a text box o display the variable it will be read.  But if I use a caption box to display the text it will NOT.  That is most interesting.  I am guessing that this represents a bug.  But if you test and discover otherwise, do let me know.  I am also wondering if JAWS will read the value even when it is in a caption box ???

P.S. ... for anyone following... I also conducted a test to insure that if I changed the value of my variable upon starting the timeline the adjusted value would be read... and that turned out to be the case... so good news there.  

~ Michael

Hi again, Michael.  I'm really sorry that your reply escaped our radar.  I didn't mean to ignore you!

I did additional testing as well on captions and other shapes that included variable references, and I tried some different variations in formatting.  JAWS still picked up the proper text from the reference.

If you'd like to share your .story file here, maybe I can find a clue in your project to understand why it's behaving that way.  Accessibility is important to us, so I want to be sure that your course works for all learners.

Thanks!

Hi Crystal,

Thank you for the reply and the testing! I actually had someone else create a dialogue with variable text and test it with JAWS… he confirmed that Jaws read the variable name rather than the text. Hmmmm. Am I possibly misremembering? I only have NVDA so I can’t test further myself. If I ever get my hands on JAWS I will give it a whirl. In the meantime, I have replaced all of those dialogues with text boxes just to be safe.

I think this is the best learning and support community ever… it definitely adds a lot of value to the Articulate lineup.

Thanks again!
~ Michael

Hi Michael,

I wonder if you could narrow down what version of JAWS and what browser he was viewing it in? 

Always good to have that back up method too and be safe. Safety first as my mom always says. 😉

Let us know if you figure anything else out and we're always here to take a look and offer advice! 

I'll post anything I learn Ashley. Thank you for the support! We are very interested in doing all we can to make training as accessible as possible.  I only have NVDA mylself, but will try to get access to JAWS for more testing.

~ Michael

I typically run the free version of JAWS to test with. They'll let you download it as a trial so it makes it really easy to test it out. 

Thank you for that helpful suggestion Ashley.  I am on a government machine though... and the installation and removal of trial software will probably be frowned upon.  It never hurts to ask though.  Maybe a No response would help encourage people to buy  ;  )

~ Michael

Maybe with the government shut down, they  just won't notice. 😉 

Let us know if you run into any other issues and we're happy to test with our own trial versions!