Dyslexia Support in Storyline

This week one of my customers has asked me about things that could be done in Storyline to help support accessibility, specifically for learners with dyslexia. I know there a whole raft of things that you can do in regard to audio narration, the use of screen readers and the fonts you use, to mention just a few.  However one area that I have presented to them as an option is the colour schemes used in your courses.

We still see a lot of black text on white backgrounds which is often hard for those with dyslexia to read, as it is very high contrast and can therefore create an unintentional movement effect on screen making it harder to read. White text on black background does the same and the use of images / gradients / shading in the background can cause inconsistencies in the contrast levels on a slide.

The British Dyslexia Association recommends using a cream (or another pastel colour) background, and also mentions that some colours work for some people and not for others.  I know lots of us are bound to some extent or other by corporate branding guidelines but I do believe that there should be a little "wiggle room" there to support accessibility and a conversation with the branding team wouldn't go amiss.

With this in mind I produced the attached test story to see if I could allow the learner to pick their own background colour that would then follow through the course.

This is the first draft and I think if this was for real I'd try and work it into the slide master and maybe have the picker in a lightbox accessed from somewhere early in the course. Also the colours used are not necessarily the optimum ones but do demonstrate the feature.

But I thought I'd share it with you anyway

H