Storyline 360 - Tab order resets when a slide layer is shown or hidden.

I was informed by Articulate staff that SL360 version 3.44 and its Focus Order enhancement might fix the issue I was describing of screen reader focus going to an unpredictable spot when a layer is closed, so I wanted to chime in with my initial findings.

Unfortunately, the issue does not appear to have been addressed; I'm still experiencing what I described previously with NVDA, JAWS 2018 and JAWS 2020. JAWS 2020 offers the "best" user experience in that focus always goes back to the slide start, and while that's far from ideal, at least its predictable and consistent; unfortunately though, very few individuals within our user community have JAWS 2020 (NVDA is, by far, the most commonly used screen reader).

I'm also noticing that NVDA is calling some non-interactive elements "clickable" and that JAWS 2020 seems to be reading what I think is the default alt text for an image that was added through Background Styles in Slide Master, but I'm not sure if these are new to this version. That NVDA behavior seems familiar and I don't think I've previously tested, with JAWS 2020, a SL360 course that had an image added that way.