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