HTML5 & Accessibility

Brian-I just finished a SL project that had no extra screen real estate for graphic add on closed captions. CC turned out to be the number one criteria for our client's accessibility rules. This week I'm using YouTube transcriptons and adding the cleaned up Closed Captions CC (sub ripped text - .srt) back into my video which will be accessed in Storyline. 

If this customer does not have this CC accessibility feature they can not get credit. So now all my courses will have at least CC. 

very relevant and hot topic. Thanks for posting. 

Great feedback Matthew and Ryan! Thank you.

Hi Brian

I've been looking into this issue in the community recently, as I'm working on a major project where the client confirmed the flash version they have installed, then just before delivery announced that behind their very strict firewall, flash does not operate at all. Luckily the HTML5 version is working well - but I am having sleepless nights now about how to tackle accessibility, since I realised that the screen reader functionality does not work at all with the HTML5 output, so even providing text alternative to some of the interactions would be impossible to navigate to ...

Are their any plans to change this / workarounds? I know a lot of other members of the community have asked this and constantly get signposted to the accessibility features regarding non-support for HTML5 ... but thought worth posing the question !

Another vote for portable standard captions and full HTML5 accessibility support. Captioning creates a problem that we've been working around but every workaround causes another issue. Lack of portability locks us into using something *just* within SL or duplicating work. If we can get standard captions in, there's an opportunity to introduce interactive transcripts to the player. Even as person without a disability, I use interactive transcripts whenever they're available.

There is quite a bit of sentiment in the content QA / development field from folks that believe that Flash cannot be made accessible. Right or wrong, this is out there. And it's a showstopper for getting Storyline content deployed in these organizations as these folks view SL as not ADA compliant.

iOS devices offer fantastic support for disabled users. None of these features are usable in the current iteration of output.

Captioning and Transcripts is a real pain to implement if the client requests it.  The amount of QA time is considerable and thing that reduces this is a bonus

I can't wait for Flash to be killed off. It's served its purpose. HTML5 might still be a little buggy and quirky sometimes--especially on Storyline projects with a lot of animations, but it's a huge improvement for accessibility. 

To handle whether or not CC is included, what I've done is just add a button that turns on/off a layer that has multiple text boxes synced with the timeline. It's time consuming, but worth it. 

I am looking into using Wistia.  It looks like it can fulfill numerous requirements besides accessibility on mobile devices. Wistia website  I am still in the evaluation stage.

I have been clamoring for a way to eliminate Flash from the production process and only go with HTML5. I wish there was an option to publish only in HTML5 as this would really ramp up the inevitable end to Flash. As many know, Flash had another major vulnerability setback days ago and I am uncomfortable putting my future into a dying technology.

January 2016 should help many organizations begin to make the shift. Lots of orgs (mine included) are still using IE8. That'll change later this year and give us a real shot at modern hotness. MS is dropping support for older browsers in January.

Hi William,

I wonder if you could give a couple of tips (I've not done a lot with HTML5 output before) - If I try and use std web based screen readers and tab etc, I can see how this works in flash, but with HTML5 web output, it doesn't do anything - Am I missing something really basic? From your post it sounds like it does work OK'ish ... would you be able to share tips on progs etc to get me started?

Many thanks in advance!

Jo

My highest priority use of Storyline is to publish learning games and quizzes to be accessed on smartphones... android in particular. Several months ago when I test-published, the quizzes appeared highly magnified on the smartphone and I could not resize the screen while in the quiz.

Has this changed?

I know this thread is a bit old but just wanted to add my support. All our clients now expect html-5 output as standard rather than flash, both for mobile compatibility and flash instability reasons. Firefox entirely blocked flash a few months ago, only for a short time but it really highlights the fact that it is basically dead.  Recently I was asked why we even bothered to provided flash versions of storyline resources and we have been enaged on quiet a few projects that involve conversion of old flash reosurces to html5.  We are also finding that more and more people require accessible resources so for us html-5 output with full accessibility is basically essential all the time.