I'm not a 508 expert, but the majority of things are author controlled in terms of what you include in the course and how that'll work for your users with disabilities. You'll want to review the information here.
You may want to share more here about your users and what specific elements you need to ensure are included so that other users who have set up the same thing are able to assist.
We have done a sample course for 508 compliance and posting that link here. Please go through that link and let us know whether that is 508 compliance or not.
If you are not aware of this, can you please check with the team and let us know about this.
Any suggestions will help us allot. Below is the link for the course. Thanks in advance!
508 compliance is not something I can weigh in on, nor could our team as it's dependent on who your users are and what type of disabilities you need to accommodate. Hopefully someone in the community can take a look and offer their thoughts on 508 compliance.
I use storyline to develop 508 content and I can say that for the most part, it's OK with it. There are several things that are weird and quirky.
For instance, when creating a button state you can NEVER have more than one object in a single state or it will remove it from the tab order. Even if you create a new state, drag a new image in, and delete the old image, as soon as you had 2 images in that state, it removed it from the tab order, right click and use "Change image" instead.
Also do NOT use hotspot objects, they do not appear in the tab order in storyline 2 (i believe they did in storyline 1 which is weird), instead use a rectangle object with a no outline or fill, if the object is only going to be used for alt text however (no triggers on it) you will need to set it to have a 100% transparent fill instead or storyline will not add it to the tab order.
You also cannot control the order in which objects are tabbed to, for the most part they appear from left to right, top to bottom, but sometimes its weird and goes to them in some sort of chunks.
Storyline's HTML5 content does not support 508 compatibility at all so keep that in mind if you intend to support mobile devices.
I've also got an issue that I'm finding where JAWs only reads the first 3 options in a 4 option question using the Pick One form. I'll be making a post about that here shortly if I cannot find any information related to it as I search through these discussions...
Thanks Matthew for sharing some of your expertise and advice on creating 508 compliant courses. If you have specific elements that are not working that you'd like us to take a look at you can start a new thread here in the forums or connect with our Support engineers here.
I know the element you mentioned in regards to the objects with additional elements added in their states is something we've reported to our QA team for review.
Actually after some further testing I've identified my 508 problem as a bug in JAWs not a bug in storyline, NVDA reads it just fine, and if I use the arrow keys instead of TAB in JAWs it reads the 4th option, but then when I hit space it reads the next item in the tab order instead despite the fact that it read that when I navigated to it in the first place!
In light of all that I've concluded that the issue lies with JAWs and not the output from storyline.
Thanks Matthew, From last couple of days I am working on this I too have found the same issues.
I have one more doubt regarding the alt text in Storyline. I have given some alt text to the objects which are in the course and I am not able to find that text anywhere in the course output.
Do I need to give roll-over text for each object for visibility of alt text or any other process is there.
Can you please suggest any other solution for this?
The alt text is read by the screen reader when you tab to it - it's not something you'll see when rolling over. If you've enabled the alt text, you'll want to make sure it's visible to accessibility tools as detailed here.
You will only be able to read the alt text using a screen reader, it's fairly inaccessible (especially in the flash version) without one, however in the html5 output you should be able to find the alt text content by inspecting the elements in the developer toolbox for your browser.
You can get a free demo of JAWs or the free NVDA screenreader to test your alt text.
10 Replies
Hi Krishna,
I'm not a 508 expert, but the majority of things are author controlled in terms of what you include in the course and how that'll work for your users with disabilities. You'll want to review the information here.
You may want to share more here about your users and what specific elements you need to ensure are included so that other users who have set up the same thing are able to assist.
Hi Ashley,
We have done a sample course for 508 compliance and posting that link here. Please go through that link and let us know whether that is 508 compliance or not.
If you are not aware of this, can you please check with the team and let us know about this.
Any suggestions will help us allot. Below is the link for the course. Thanks in advance!
http://redchipsolutions.com/Download/Test_508%20-%20Storyline%20output/story.html
Hi Krishna,
508 compliance is not something I can weigh in on, nor could our team as it's dependent on who your users are and what type of disabilities you need to accommodate. Hopefully someone in the community can take a look and offer their thoughts on 508 compliance.
I use storyline to develop 508 content and I can say that for the most part, it's OK with it. There are several things that are weird and quirky.
For instance, when creating a button state you can NEVER have more than one object in a single state or it will remove it from the tab order. Even if you create a new state, drag a new image in, and delete the old image, as soon as you had 2 images in that state, it removed it from the tab order, right click and use "Change image" instead.
Also do NOT use hotspot objects, they do not appear in the tab order in storyline 2 (i believe they did in storyline 1 which is weird), instead use a rectangle object with a no outline or fill, if the object is only going to be used for alt text however (no triggers on it) you will need to set it to have a 100% transparent fill instead or storyline will not add it to the tab order.
You also cannot control the order in which objects are tabbed to, for the most part they appear from left to right, top to bottom, but sometimes its weird and goes to them in some sort of chunks.
Storyline's HTML5 content does not support 508 compatibility at all so keep that in mind if you intend to support mobile devices.
I've also got an issue that I'm finding where JAWs only reads the first 3 options in a 4 option question using the Pick One form. I'll be making a post about that here shortly if I cannot find any information related to it as I search through these discussions...
Thanks Matthew for sharing some of your expertise and advice on creating 508 compliant courses. If you have specific elements that are not working that you'd like us to take a look at you can start a new thread here in the forums or connect with our Support engineers here.
I know the element you mentioned in regards to the objects with additional elements added in their states is something we've reported to our QA team for review.
Actually after some further testing I've identified my 508 problem as a bug in JAWs not a bug in storyline, NVDA reads it just fine, and if I use the arrow keys instead of TAB in JAWs it reads the 4th option, but then when I hit space it reads the next item in the tab order instead despite the fact that it read that when I navigated to it in the first place!
In light of all that I've concluded that the issue lies with JAWs and not the output from storyline.
Thanks Matthew for that update and I'm glad you were able to determine where the issue lies.
Thanks Matthew, From last couple of days I am working on this I too have found the same issues.
I have one more doubt regarding the alt text in Storyline. I have given some alt text to the objects which are in the course and I am not able to find that text anywhere in the course output.
Do I need to give roll-over text for each object for visibility of alt text or any other process is there.
Can you please suggest any other solution for this?
Thanks in advance!
Hi Krishna,
The alt text is read by the screen reader when you tab to it - it's not something you'll see when rolling over. If you've enabled the alt text, you'll want to make sure it's visible to accessibility tools as detailed here.
You will only be able to read the alt text using a screen reader, it's fairly inaccessible (especially in the flash version) without one, however in the html5 output you should be able to find the alt text content by inspecting the elements in the developer toolbox for your browser.
You can get a free demo of JAWs or the free NVDA screenreader to test your alt text.
This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.