Images in Storyline 360

Nov 09, 2017

My presentations are loading slowly on some devices (images are opening in stages, first the top half, then the bottom half of the image). Is this just the way it is, or should I be optimizing my images to load better? If so, can someone point me to the guidelines for getting my images to load faster?

Also, if I add alt text to my images in Storyline 360, will the presentation be accessible for screen readers? Or would it be necessary to create a separate version (word doc, etc) for accessibility to work?

6 Replies
Daniel Brigham

1. It may be the LMS or server where the course is housed. You could also adjust the quality settings when you publish for lower quality images and thus small file size. You might just want to crank the image quality slider way to the left to see if this has any impact. My gut says, that if you have the default setting, which you probably do, it might be your LMS or server. 

 

Dave Goodman

Rebecca - one thing that I do is to take my images and bring them into an image editor and reduce the color count. The file sizes are dramatically reduced, load time is perfect and the image is not reduced in quality. As Daniel pointed out you can achieve similar results by using the built-in quality variable in SL publishing page. I suggest that you do your own test and use both approaches to make your own determination. You do not need to create separate courses for 508 purposes BUT you must read the guidelines first so that you design and develop your course acccordingly. It is not about alt text tags but more about use of menus, tab sequence, using layers/states etc. The 508 courses are happier when they are more text oriented with tagged images etc but there is a perceived difference in the type of course that you provide to your learners.

Rebecca Cuevas

Thank you, David, for this very helpful answer. I'll try some tests and see what makes a difference for the image loading speed, if anything.

I'm not under a legal requirement to provide 508 courses.. .I'm designing for my own site. But I want to follow best practices to the extent I can, and make my materials welcoming to everyone.

I am not  sure I understand what you mean by "there is a perceived difference in the type of course that you provide to your learners." Can you explain that further? 

I THINK what you are saying is that the more digital bells and whistles there are, the more complex things can get for screen readers, etc... and then it seems like the accessible courses (or accessible version of the same course) is not as fully-featured as the regular version. (Is that a correct understanding, or were you saying something else?) 

I'm finding that the digital bells and whistles can present problems in other ways too.. such as not working on all devices, or adding to cognitive load due to the user not understanding how to make the interaction work.

I'm just learning Storyline and the whole Articulate suite of apps so there's also the aspect of it being more challenging for ME to make the bells and whistles work. 

My main focus is on making sure the learning flows easily into the learner's mind... not on how fancy the interface is. So that's the part that I want to make sure works right.. for everyone.  

 

Dave Goodman

Rebecca - you are on target. The issue with the 508 courses are that they become very text heavy with minimal, if any, triggers/variables/state changes. Some people will argue that 508 designed/compliant courses are best for everyone. My concern is that you can create a beautiful, highly engaging interactive course that could win awards and great kudos from your learners thereby improving utilization, potentially improve performance, gain some additional revenue, etc. or you could design a text based course.

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