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

I was actually doing some testing of Focus Order and layers today in the most recent version, and here’s what I found…

Testing conditions: NVDA+Chrome; layers where shown via objects (shapes in one test, pictures in another, same results with both) that had ‘show layer when user clicks’ triggers; layers contained objects with ‘hide this layer when user clicks’ triggers.

If the layer had the ‘Prevent users from clicking on other layers’ layer property assigned: when you opened the layer, focus would go to the element in the layer that was highest in the Focus Order—same behavior I’ve encountered for a long time. But, when you hid the layer, focus would go back to the object used to open the layer in the first place—different than previously experienced behavior, where focus would land on whatever detectable object came next in the Focus Order (ie, whatever was after the object that had the ‘hide layer when user clicks’ trigger).

If the layer did not have the Prevent… property assigned, when you opened the layer, focus would stay on the object with the show layer trigger—same behavior as experienced for some time. And when I closed the layer, focus would go to a random spot in the Focus Order, but for me, always one after the object with the hide layer trigger, so more toward the end of the slide’s Focus Order and not toward the top as others reported—this has been my experience for years.

And actually, the whole reason I did this testing was that I was finding other Focus Order irregularities: objects being skipped; differences reading backwards compared to forwards. I didn’t end up finding a consistent rule or pattern I can share, unfortunately.