Storyline Player - accessibility and learner experience

In my opinion, the player is a better experience for a learner using assistive technologies. Of course not all learners are created equal -- some may want to slow down the course using the playback speed, some learners may want to enable closed captions because they are deaf, non-native speakers of the language your course is in, or they just like closed captions (like me!). The player also allows the ability to raise or lower the volume of just the Storyline course, independent of things like a screen reader or the rest of the user's computer audio. Taking those things away from the player would be a disservice to the learner.

Turning off the player to make things easier for someone using keyboard navigation and a screen reader would almost certainly create a worse experience for everybody else who might use those player elements!