Storyline 360 – Random Focus Highlight Appearing on Interactive Elements During Mouse Navigation

Hi Articulate Community,

We are working on an accessibility-compliant Storyline 360 course and are facing an issue with the visual accessibility focus indicator.

We have enabled a visible accessibility focus color in Storyline because keyboard-only users need to be able to identify which interactive element currently has focus.

Expected behavior

• When a learner navigates using the Tab key, the currently focused interactive element should have a clearly visible focus indicator.
• The focus indicator should move as the learner moves through the interactive elements using Tab / Shift+Tab.
• During mouse-only navigation, we would not expect the focus indicator to appear or remain unexpectedly around interactive elements.

Current behavior

When testing the published course, we are seeing the following:

• During normal mouse navigation, a yellow/amber outline or highlight sometimes appears around an interactive element.
• The highlighted element is not always the element we expect to have focus.
• The highlight appears only on some interactive elements and seems to occur inconsistently.
• It can remain visible after a mouse click.
• When we navigate using the Tab key, the focus indicator works as expected and provides a clear visual indication of the current keyboard focus.

This creates a visual issue because the focus indicator was intentionally added to support keyboard accessibility, but during normal mouse interaction it can appear unexpectedly and make the interface look as though an element is still selected or focused.

The concern is not that the accessibility focus indicator exists. We understand that a visible focus indicator is required for keyboard accessibility, and we want to retain it.

Our question is specifically about the unexpected appearance of the focus indicator during mouse interaction.

1. Could anyone confirm whether this is expected behavior in Storyline 360?
2. Is there a supported Storyline setting that allows the focus indicator to remain visible for keyboard navigation using Tab, while preventing it from appearing or remaining visible unexpectedly during normal mouse navigation?
3. Could browser focus behavior cause the Storyline accessibility focus indicator to appear after a mouse click?
4. Are there any known issues in recent Storyline 360 builds involving unexpected or inconsistent focus indicators?

We would particularly appreciate guidance from Articulate on whether this is expected browser/Storyline focus behavior, a known Storyline issue, or something that can be controlled through Storyline settings.

Thanks in advance!