Tab Order - problems with Radio buttons, and images and shapes are excluded from tab order
Apr 06, 2022
Good afternoon/Good morning!
I’ve been playing around with accessibility and Focus Order and seem to have found some strange behaviours. Whilst the Focus Order window shows all objects on the slide, not all are ‘tabbable’ in Preview mode or iwhen published to Review. This applies specifically to pictures/images and shapes. I’m surprised that these are omitted – how are pictures to be described by a screen reader using the Alt-Text content if they can't be tabbed to?
The other issue is that whilst check boxes are tabbable, radio buttons are not – they seem to be treated as a single object, with the result that only radio button 1 is highlighted when tabbed to; a subsequent tab moves to the next non-radio-button object and doesn't allow radio buttons 2, 3 and so on to be selected.
Am I missing something here? Apologies, if I am 😀
I’ve attached my test .Story file. I’m on the latest version 3.62.27443.0. I don’t have a screen reader installed, as I was more interested in the Tab Order side of things.
Many thanks,
Martin
4 Replies
Only interactive objects are tabbed to, the rest are read by the screen reader using the up and down arrow. Any objects in a button set behave differently and you tab to the first one and then use the up down arrows to navigate.
Hi, Phil ...
Thanks for the reply - your explanation of how to navigate Button Sets works perfectly.
However, I still couldn't get the screen reader (I'm using NVDA) to read the ALT-Text on pictures or text boxes, as they are not tab-able. I've tried using the cursor keys, but nothing happens.
I have come up with a way of making an object interactive, which is to assign a trigger to each object that you want to be tab-able, which then includes the object in the tab order and makes the screen reader read the ALT-Text .*
I've not really dabbled with accessibility issues before - is there a better solution?
*(For anyone interested in this solution, the trigger doesn't even have to be complete - in other words, just selecting the object and adding a CHANGE STATE trigger and pressing OK without filling in any other fields works fine. You can even disable the trigger if you want. The type of trigger does seem to be important, however - this solution doesn't work if you make the trigger a HOVER trigger, for example. I've attached a demo, if you ARE interested).
Regards,
Martin
Hi, Martin.
Thank you for sharing your .story file(s)!
However, I still couldn't get the screen reader (I'm using NVDA) to read the ALT-Text on pictures or text boxes, as they are not tab-able. I've tried using the cursor keys, but nothing happens.
When you tested your project with NVDA, were you using the published version or Storyline's preview? I was able to hear the alt-text for the images using the arrow keys on a published version of your project.
Let me know if you're experiencing something different!
Hi, Maria and Phil!
You were spot on! I was indeed testing the slide in Preview, not as a published item! Everything works perfectly once published and all Alt-Text is read by the screen reader when using the arrow keys.
As someone who is not visually impaired, I had wrongly assumed that the Tab key was of primary importance and that the arrow keys were of lesser value. I appreciate now that using the arrow keys allows you to explore the slide, whereas the tab key allows you to use it!
Many thanks for the support
Rgds
Martin