Tabbed Navigation Order

Mar 31, 2015

Sarah Newman
By Sarah Newman

Hi everyone,

I'm working on a course that requires 508 compliance, and I'm having trouble with the order of items selected when using tabbed navigation. When the user presses the tab key to navigate through the screen content, it only goes in order from left to right and top to bottom.

I added in some triggers so that the user could open layer content by pressing number keys rather than clicking the button on the screen or jumping around the slide with the tabbed navigation, but apparently this can cause issues with the JAWS screen reader. I need to find an easy way for users to access content in a tabbed interaction that doesn't interfere with JAWS.

Has Storyline 2 added any functionality for selecting tab key navigation order? All the information I've found on it is for the original Storyline. I'm hoping the new version makes things easier.

4 Replies
Steve Flowers
9 years ago04/01/15 at 12:54 am (UTC)

Hi Sarah - 

Can you paste a screenshot of it here? Or better yet, attach the screen so we can take a look? Might help to see the context of the challenge. I added some notes for potential opportunities on another recent post of yours. 

Also, keys can cause problems with JAWS as it's key control intensive. TBH, veteran screen reader users are amazing. Like 500 to 1000 words per minute, super-human amazing. So keyboard controls are super-critical to their process.

Secret is to figure out which keys won't cause problems. Here's a list:

http://webaim.org/resources/shortcuts/jaws

Some folks recommend not using access keys at all because of the potential conflicts but mostly because of the different ways browsers implement key activations. 1 - 6 are off the table because JAWS uses those for heading level access. And ALT / CTRL number combos are used by the browser (IE anyway).  So you might be able to use ALT-A, B, C, D without conflict.

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