Forum Discussion
Focus order: keyboard navigation and screen reader
Hello all,
I’m a very infrequent Storyline user, dusting off Articulate Storyline 3 for the first time in about four years. Apologies if this is a newbie question. I’m about to embark on a month of full-on authoring, so I really appreciate any guidance from the Articulate brains trust😊
My goal is to meet WCAG2 accessibility requirements (or get as close as possible).
Keyboard Navigation: With a keyboard, I can tab through all the interactive elements in the handful of slides I’ve put together (see the example in my screenshot). I vaguely recall from years ago, perhaps incorrectly, that I could tab through text boxes. I’ve found a workaround by adding a trigger (that doesn’t really do anything) and making the text boxes interactive. Should I be able to tab through my text boxes? Do others keep their text boxes tabbable?
JAWS Screen Reader: I’ve downloaded JAWS, and it reads the interactive objects correctly when I tab through. However, it doesn’t pick up text boxes in the Focus Order unless I click on the text on the screen AND have replicated the text in the Alternative Text row. Is this expected behaviour? How would you normally handle this? Should I stick to my keyboard navigation workaround and add the alternative text?
Any insights or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Ben
4 Replies
Hi Ben - Using the tab key is going to capture the interactive elements (e.g., tabbing to the next interactable). The text boxes should be read as content when using the up and down arrows on the keyboard. Let me know if this helps :)
And it's working as expected! For some reason, I had the tab key stuck in my head. Arrows are working perfectly. Thank you, Ashley! Really appreciate your help :)
Hi hope you don't mind me jumping on this thread. I'm having a similar issue with Jaws and the Focus Order. My screen contains a graphic (its a system simulation, so the graphic is the system screen). Next I have some instructions for the action I want the user to take, then an input field and a hotspot.
The interactive objects all contain alt text and are in the correct order in the Focus Order, however when I access the screen Jaws jumps straight to the first interactive object (the input field). It skips the graphic and instructions. After some key pressing I find if I press Tab it goes to 'Back to the top' and from there I can get to the first object in my Focus Order, this is far from ideal for Jaws users, am I doing something wrong?Hi DavidLodge,
Sorry to hear that you ran into this snag.
If your course is not following the focus order correctly, we'll need to examine your project file to identify what could be causing the behavior. Would you be willing to share a copy of your project file here or privately by opening a support case so we can test it? We'll delete it when we're done!
