Tabbing and disabled buttons

Aug 11, 2015

Hi all,

I am having problems with accessibility in my courses and think it may be a bug. I have slides which need to be locked until certain activities are completed. To do this I have disabled my custom built 'next' buttons until certain events are triggered. One problem however is when the user presses the TAB key to cycle through selectable elements on the screen they can navigate to the next button, hit enter, and proceed to the next slide. This occurs even when the button is disabled and the mouse click doesn't work (as intended). 

I have attached a simple .story file so you can publish it and see an example. You should never be able to access slide 3 but the bug allows you to. I also know you can prevent elements from being accessed with the tab button and this is currently how I have had to set my projects up (though this is not desired).

Any help would be much appreciated :)

17 Replies
Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Greg,

Thanks for reaching out here and sharing your .story file, I do see that this has been reported to our QA team for review in regards to navigating with your keyboard. In the meantime, you may want to look at hiding the button until elements of the slide have occurred to allow them to proceed. You could always include a "fake" button in the meantime, that when the real button's state changes, that "fake" one goes to a state of hidden or disappears based on the timeline. 

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Henri, 

Thanks again for reaching out here - I saw the same behavior in Storyline 3 and Storyline 360 so I've reported it to my team for additional investigation. In the meantime, I found a built in next button that was set to disabled wasn't accessible with the enter key whereas a custom button was accessible. 

Depending on priority and risk, some bugs can be fixed quickly, while others take longer to resolve. Here's more information on how we identify and tackle bugs.

I’ll let you know as soon as we have an update on this issue. Thanks so much again for letting us know about this, and I’m sorry if it’s slowing you down.

Ryan Blanc

I am dealing with the same issue. Also, I created a slide with multiple layers with custom buttons to navigate to these layers, but users can tab to buttons from other layers which causes many issues when they press ENTER. I would love for Articulate to come up with a solution already. Currently all items on a single slide will appear on the same Tab Order list regardless if they are on different layers or not.

I would also be interested in seeing an update that would allow audio files to play over several slides.

Katie Riggio

Hey, folks! We just released update 17 for Storyline 360 – check out all the new features and fixes here!

One of the fixes addresses an issue where disabled buttons would sometimes trigger with keyboard navigation.

Enjoy everything this update has to offer by launching the Articulate 360 desktop app on your computer and then clicking on Storyline's Update button. It's that simple! Let us know if you have any questions 🌟

Crystal Horn

Hey again, everybody. I'm excited to let you know that we just released update 5 for Storyline 3! It includes new features and fixes - check them all out here.

This is the same fix that Katie mentions above, but for Storyline 3: disabled buttons should no longer be accessible through keyboard navigation.

Here’s where you can download and install the latest version of Storyline 3. Let me know how you make out!

Shane Leonard

I can verify this bug is still an issue in latest version. You don't need a shared file to verify, just add an element (shape, text box, whatever).
Add a trigger to Go to Next slide if the element is clicked.
Set the element's default state to disabled.

When you test, you correctly won't be able to click the element (cause it's disabled), but you can tab to the element and then press enter to 'click' the 'disabled' button and advance to the next slide.

Not the first time a fix has been applied, only to be omitted and overlooked in future versions.

Becca Levan

Hi Shane,

So sorry you're hitting this snag, and thanks for sharing the steps you took to recreate the issue!

Here’s a quick recording of my experience in Storyline 360 Update 3.49.24347.0 after following those steps. I used a button in my test, which has the Disabled state built-in.

A few questions to help us find a fix:

  • Does the problem happen during preview, in the published output, or both?
  • Is it project-specific?

Would you be willing to share the troublesome file with us? It’ll greatly help our team verify whether that bug is affecting your course or if something else is happening. Simply use this case link.

Becca Levan

Hey Shane,

I understand, and I've opened a case with our Support Engineers on your behalf and included your video—appreciate you sharing that!

You should have an email from me sitting in your inbox! It includes an upload link so you can upload any files privately there.

Please let me know if you don’t see an email in your inbox, and I’ll be happy to send it again!

Jose Tansengco

HI Emily,

Sorry to hear that you ran into this snag.

Since the issue discussed in this thread have already been fixed in previous versions of Storyline,  would you be willing to share a copy of your project file here or in private by opening a support case so we can take a closer look at what's happening? We'll delete it when we're done testing!