I'm curious if you know of features incorporated into Storyline that would alleviate my needing to do more work to make my course accessible to the vision-impaired. I've been descriptively labeling all the pictures, but I don't know how screen readers react to the player or how to modify the player to help with this. We've never specifically made our materials accessible to vision-impaired customers before, so this is new territory.
The course is very simple, one that's being translated from a voiced-over Powerpoint. Little to no interactivity as of yet.
The main thing to take into account other than the Alt tags (which you seem to be on top of already), is that Top left objects take precedence when using a screen reader.
While you are previewing a course, you can press the Tab key and a yellow box will appear. As you tab, it will move through the objects on the page. This is the order that the screen reader goes in.
In addition, when the learner tabs over to the "Menu" Tab, it is silent. It is something to be aware of.
While you are previewing a course, you can press the Tab key and a yellow box will appear. As you tab, it will move through the objects on the page. This is the order that the screen reader goes in.
In addition, when the learner tabs over to the "Menu" Tab, it is silent. It is something to be aware of.
We did some extensive testing with JAWS on this, and I should be really more clear about the Menu. It is the actual menu itself that is silent, not the tab that says "Menu" (or Outline) on it. Everything else will read for a screen reader.
It also won't tab to the individual items on the menu.
We put in "invisible" instructions or similar for visibly impaired. The majority of our backgrounds were white, so we would just put in white colored text that would read outloud for the screen reader. We would also put in invisible "previous" and "next" buttons so they wouldn't have to tab all the way through the silent menu to get to them.
If you are really trying to appeal to visually impaired with Storyline, I'd recommend forgoing the sidebar menu all together and either have a custom one or have it be the drop down version where it is located at the top of the player instead.
If you have any questions, let me know. One of my colleagues has done a ton of testing with JAWS in Storyline so we've really figured out most of the do's and don'ts - but I'm pretty sure I've covered the major pain points for screen readers specifically.
The resources button doesn't work well either. I believe JAWS will read it but you can't really open the resources from it.
They put buttons on the relevant or final slides that open the files as well. Note: this will only work in an LMS or the CD version, if you're just putting a web based version on a shared drive or something then these buttons don't open the files.
Thanks for this great clarification everyone, we have a lady who is visually impaired in the offices here and so it's fantastic to be able to understand the implications in further detail!
Storyline is not fully accessible and if you require 508 compliance, you will need to do a lot of extra work in storyline. I know this is a storyline forum lol but as a designer who creates in multiple applications for federal govt that requires 508 - straight html or captivate are your best options.
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The main thing to take into account other than the Alt tags (which you seem to be on top of already), is that Top left objects take precedence when using a screen reader.
While you are previewing a course, you can press the Tab key and a yellow box will appear. As you tab, it will move through the objects on the page. This is the order that the screen reader goes in.
In addition, when the learner tabs over to the "Menu" Tab, it is silent. It is something to be aware of.
I've never tried it but I would imagine that's something that works all the same... Can anyone confirm?
We did some extensive testing with JAWS on this, and I should be really more clear about the Menu. It is the actual menu itself that is silent, not the tab that says "Menu" (or Outline) on it. Everything else will read for a screen reader.
It also won't tab to the individual items on the menu.
We put in "invisible" instructions or similar for visibly impaired. The majority of our backgrounds were white, so we would just put in white colored text that would read outloud for the screen reader. We would also put in invisible "previous" and "next" buttons so they wouldn't have to tab all the way through the silent menu to get to them.
If you are really trying to appeal to visually impaired with Storyline, I'd recommend forgoing the sidebar menu all together and either have a custom one or have it be the drop down version where it is located at the top of the player instead.
If you have any questions, let me know. One of my colleagues has done a ton of testing with JAWS in Storyline so we've really figured out most of the do's and don'ts - but I'm pretty sure I've covered the major pain points for screen readers specifically.
Oops looks like I need to edit my statement.
The resources button doesn't work well either. I believe JAWS will read it but you can't really open the resources from it.
They put buttons on the relevant or final slides that open the files as well. Note: this will only work in an LMS or the CD version, if you're just putting a web based version on a shared drive or something then these buttons don't open the files.
Thanks for this great clarification everyone, we have a lady who is visually impaired in the offices here and so it's fantastic to be able to understand the implications in further detail!
Storyline is not fully accessible and if you require 508 compliance, you will need to do a lot of extra work in storyline. I know this is a storyline forum lol but as a designer who creates in multiple applications for federal govt that requires 508 - straight html or captivate are your best options.
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