Forum Discussion

DonnaWestwood's avatar
DonnaWestwood
Community Member
6 months ago

Dials ALT text?

  Hello Community! We are building some accessible interactions - and one of them uses dials to open a padlock.  In our QA testing - no matter what we add in the alt text for the dial, the screen ...
accessibility
storyline 360
JoseTansengco's avatar
JoseTansengco
Staff
6 months ago

Hello DonnaWestwood,

Happy to help!

Here's what I see when I add a dial with alt text to a Storyline 360 slide and then export the translation file:

Since the alt text is what's read by the screen reader, you shouldn't have any accessibility issues with the dial and its alternative text. Are you experiencing any unusual behavior with how your screen readers are reading the dial object in your course because of how the alt text is formatted in the HTML of the course? 

If you check the slide's focus order, it also reflects the correct alternative text, not the version that includes the number of steps in the dial. Can I ask if you've tested your course with the screen reader? And is it reading the number of steps in the dial and the added alternative text?

SamHill's avatar
SamHill
Super Hero
6 months ago

Hi JoseTansengco I have also tested this and can confirm DonnaWestwood concerns with ALT text for dials. I just conducted my own experiment. 

I added a dial to the slide, and set the range from 0-100 (arc of 180degrees), Step = 1, Initial = 0.

I then added my ALT text value of "Volume" and assigned the dial to a variable called "Volume" as well.

I then published the content and inspected the text in the browser, and also used JAWS screen reader to work with the dial.

The ALT text that is being automatically created for the dial is incorrect. I think the developers have intended to construct a meaningful ALT text value using the ALT text provided by the user, and then appending extra information. However, the extra information is incorrect, and appears to be hard coded: "Volume Dial 2 range from 0 to 12"

As you can see, the following information is added to my ALT text "Dial 2 range from 0 to 12".

This information is incorrect, as the dial will always report "range from 0 to 12" regardless of the setting on the dial. This information appears to have been hard coded.

The other information "Dial 2" just appears to be junk.

This needs to be fixed as it is not reporting the correct information to screen readers. It should be working as follows: "{user defined alt} range from {user defined minimum} to {user defined maximum}". In my example, is would read "Volume range from 0 to 100".

The culprit is the aria-label on the input, but the text is also reflected in the data-acc-text attribute too.

Fortunately the min and max attributes are being correctly set using the user defined values, and so when the screen reader user interacts with the slide, they are correctly told that the range is 0-100 and reports the current value.

See the following short video: https://app.screencast.com/HMEgoGT8hrFUa

Here are my settings:

Thanks - Sam.