Forum Discussion
Storyline and JAWS - setting course up and testing with JAWS
We have a course for a client that needs to be 508 compliant. We've been learning Storyline along with the rest of you (and likely, not as quickly), and trying to set it up correctly to also be 508 compliant. The closed captioning is set up and working based on following tutorials from this community ("Generating Closed Captions" - thank you Steve Flowers!).
Our issue is in getting JAWS to read the course - I'm not sure if it's an LMS issue, or pieces I need to set up in Storyline that I haven't done.
We have tried to have a user who is blind test a sample of the course (5 slides) using JAWS on our LMS and also on ScormCloud. Each time she has tried, she has not been able to get farther than pressing enter to view the course and hearing:
~ the name of the course
~scormdriver_content frame
~scormdriver_content frame end
She tried pressing enter on each thing and nothing would start the course.
Our LMS employee tried to set the course start in a new window, and downloaded JAWS to test on his end. His response was: She is right that nothing plays initially. What she couldn't know is that Jaws is able to read some of the content. When I click on the buttons or Nav links, Jaws reads the buttons. It also reads the titles when I navigate the menu (it reads what I click on though, doesn't read it ahead of time.) When I use the slash key, JAWS Tells me there are no clickable buttons. It doesn't read any of the content either.
I submitted a support case to Articulate to see if there are steps we are missing in the course. I gave the LMS person's response above. After a couple back and forths, the response I have from Articulate is: JAWS will only read the items that are highlighted. It won't read anything ahead. If it did read anything ahead, it would clash with the narration that is already on each slide & only confuse the end-user even more. Finally, our output doesn't support the Slash key in the sense that the slash key will move to the next clickable item. This shortcut key is typically associated with HTML content.
Honestly, I'm still lost. I've looked at all the tutorials I can find, and I'm just not seeing the post that makes it all click and make sense. I realize we must be missing several things here.
Is there someone that has knowledge of working with JAWS that would be willing to either give suggestions or test our sample (published or storyline format) to see what we are missing?
- Are there variables or triggers I need to place in the course specifically related to JAWS - ex. keystrokes, and if so, do those go on the master slides?
- Our course currently has 7 scenes, and within each scene the slides advance automatically. For JAWS, do they instead need to advance by user?
- From what I'm seeing in other posts, someone using JAWS needs to be able to turn the audio off, correct?
- Our quiz questions are all true/false or multiple choice.
- Our full course is about 80 slides (a 40 minute course) with full audio, and 2 1 minute videos at the beginning.
Would greatly appreciate your help.
Hi everyone,
I wanted to share a few more details on our work in this area.
First up, we strongly believe that as many people as possible should be able to fully experience training created with our tools.
As accessibility requirements and standards have evolved, we recognize that our authors have found it increasingly challenging to create accessible content using our authoring tools.
We’ve been investing in accessibility improvements in our tools for some time. Closed captions, text-to-speech, and improved management of alt text and captions in media library are a few examples in Storyline alone.
We’ve also been working behind the scenes for well over a year to fundamentally restructure our published output. We’re working on additional accessibility features for Storyline, with the goal of making it fully compliant with WCAG 2.1 and s.508:
- Our initial focus is the player frame. We’re improving the way learners move around a course, ensuring that all controls, menus, and dialogs are correctly labeled and structured. This work has been progressing well and we’re aiming to have an early version in Beta in Q3.
- Next, we’ll tackle the slide content itself, starting with the basics (reading text, navigation, layer interactions) before addressing specific areas like quizzing, interactions, and media playback.
- Finally, we’ll be improving key workflows in Storyline to expose new functionality and make it easier to create inclusive courses without a lot of extra effort.
We’ve had ongoing conversations with our customers and will be addressing a number of longstanding accessibility issues and reported bugs as part of this work. We’ll also be expanding our official support for screen readers beyond JAWS to include other popular tools on desktop and mobile.
We’re not ready to talk about timings in detail yet, but we’re planning to roll out improvements in phases, starting with the player frame. We’re aiming to get the first improvements released towards the end of this year.
We’re committed to making Storyline courses accessible to learners with a wide range of abilities and needs and look forward to working with our customers to get there.
If you're interested in participating in the Beta process when we're ready to start testing, please email beta@articulate.com.
- Simon
Kristin,
Hi -I'm still here! I would love to be able to tell you that we figured everything out related to Storyline, 508 compliance and JAWS. Unfortunately, we never got much farther than this post or others where I posted asking for tutorials, guides, or anything helpful related to 508 compliance course set up and testing.
While I haven't been searching lately, I've not seen Articulate post a 'best practices' for how to set a course up best for 508 compliance, or what steps need to be followed to test it correctly with a JAWS reader. In one post I was told by Jeanette Brooks (Sept 2012 "tutorial on 508 compliance) it was 'in the works' and would be coming soon, but that it was difficult to set up guidelines since all 508 might be client-specific on what they required.
Ultimately, our government client has our "screen reader" version of the course we created for them, but there hasn't been anyone on their end with JAWS that was able to successfully test the course and provide feedback. Our other way to have workable content for a user needing 508 was to essentially create an ebook. We've not yet had another client requesting 508 compliance, so we moved away from the issue for now.
So, yes, Articulate will say it's compliant and point you toward their webpage that says it's compliant, but after a year and a half of asking on the forum for assistance, I've yet to see specific tutorials or best practices from Articulate on how to correctly set up the course so it can be tested. It's hard for most designers to test internally since we don't own JAWS.
Maybe I've missed information on best practices. I'm not on the forum regularly. I know many other forum members have come up with bits and pieces of 508 solutions.
Sorry I couldn't be of more help.
Sure thing, Susan! I also wanted to note in case you were not aware, when you reply to a forum notification via email, the details in your signature are displayed publicly here in the discussion. In order to protect your privacy, you are welcome to click here to be taken to the post itself, and then you will be able to use the EDIT button below your reply to remove that information. :)
I don't see how the skip navigation addition lends anything to the accessibility of the user experience. What it does, is provide a shortcut to the NEXT slide link - bypassing the other navigation links. So, now it takes longer for users to get to the other useful controls (like turning on the captions, adjusting audio, etc)...how is this helpful?
Hi Laura,
Im in the same boat as you. Have you found any usefull information that you care to share.
Thanks
Josh
Hi Josh and Laura -
Have you discovered a solution to this. Running into this issue for the first time. There's really no way for our blind participant to see what is highlighted - so it's a goose chase for him to tab through to what is highlighted - he doesn't know when he's landed on "next" because it says "image" for the player's next button....
Hi Kristin,
This thread is a bit older, so I'm not certain Josh and Laura are still subscribed. You could send them a private message to see if they're able to update you on their status, but you may also want to review the information here on Storyline's 508 compliance. I did find another thread (also from Laura) where it was determined that it was also browser specific and needed to be in IE.
Also, I wanted to mention how the highlight will move - by default, the yellow box will travel from the upper-left corner of the slide to the lower-right corner. Here is some additional information on those tabs.
Hi all. We have run into the issue of JAWS not being able to read a course developed in Storyline. Has any additional information available on how to do configure Storyline to be able to be used effectively for the JAWS screen reader?
Hi JP and welcome to Heroes!
What version of JAWS are you using? I also remember reading on their site that JAWS is to be used with the newest version of Internet Explorer. You'll also want to ensure you've enabled the alt text for your Storyline courses and objects as described here.
We have a work experience student in with us at the moment who uses JAWS, NVDA and the OSX native option.
We are testing various options but initially things look more promising in IE. Storyline content works well using the tabbing function and both JAWS and NVDA read out content automatically.
