tutorial on 508 compliance?

Hi Jon, yes we are in fact working on some resources for folks who are interested in learning more about accessibility. Stay tuned.

YAY!!

Jeanette, any idea how long we need to wait for a tutorial for 508?  We have a course coming soon to a deadline. SOON.

I've asked for help with a support case that hasn't gotten us any closer to a working screen reader version, I've posted on the community looking for a "best practices" and not gotten a response (except from someone else who also needed help).

I NEED A HERO!

We've covered the closed captioning. We've covered the color-blind contrast issues. We need to know the best practices for working with a screen reader. Because our main training course has a fair bit of animation/movement, and many of the slides in a scene advance automatically, we're thinking the screen reader version has to be a separate course.  For Storyline to keep working for us, we'll need to either design future courses differently so everything can be one course, or learn a better way to use this software.

Here's what I'm assuming based on what we've been able to discover so far:

• User would use 'tab' to move through the screen (left to right, top to bottom) with the text or images highlighted with the yellow box
• I understand how to add "alt text" as needed for images, along with choosing if each item on the slide is visible or not to the screen reader
• All slides should be advance by user
• All slides should not have audio that starts automatically, or have just a sound to show that it's a new slide
• All images/phrases/words on screen should be initially visible (meaning no animation in or out) so they don't get skipped by a screen reader

Am I incorrect on any of this?

Where would you give the user instructions on navigating the course?

What else have you found that we're still missing?

Thanks all.

Hey Laura, I'm sorry, we don't have a date pegged for the upcoming resources, but rest assured that we're eager to make them available once we're confident they're solid. I think you've got a lot of good guidelines in the bullets you listed. To a great degree, often the accessibilty guidelines on a given project are driven by client-specific requirements which might or might not apply to all courses in every case (one of the reasons why this topic can sometimes be difficult to nail down). In addition to the guidelines you mentioned, one practice that I've also seen that can help with regard to slide advance is to set up hot keys that allow the learner to advance with just a keystroke rather than having to tab  to the Next button every time. Regarding the support case you mentioned: if you haven't gotten resolution on Storyline's behavior with a screen reader, would you mind replying to the support engineer so that the support team could reopen your case and continue to help troubleshoot?

One thing I tried is to make a note that is invisible to all but those with a screen reader, to provide them with the information that is on the slide, but which will be inaccessible to them. In this case it was a drag-and-drop slide. I made a small box about the same color as the background so most people wouldn't notice it near the top of the slide. I made it visible to the screen reader and added alt-text that provided the information shown on the slide, i.e., "On this slide, items were dragged to the correct receptacle, based on the type of item. The used gloves belong in the biohazard waste, paper in the recycle bin and  cleaning materials were placed in the closet. Please use the right arrow on the keyboard to go to the next slide. " 

I then made all the items on the slide invisible to the screen reader except for this explanatory alt-text item.

I think this could also work for an Engage slide, if these can be used in Storyline. If so, I'd just place a similar box on the previous slide with alt text to give them the same information as is available to mouse-users on the next slide and then ask them to click a button to skip that next slide.

I think this might be a way around slides like drag and drop and others that screen-reader users can't do.

Is it possible to insert Engage interactions into Storyline? It seems quizzes from Quizmaker can be used, correct?

Yes, quizzes and engage can be imported. However, engage is not HTML5 compatible.

What does that last statement mean as far as the course is concerned? If I publish to html5, the interaction won't work? What are my other options in that case? Pardon my lack of knowledge, here.

If you publish to HTML5 and view on an ipad, correct, the Engage will not display as it is a Flash based interaction.The alternatives are to rebuild the Engage interactions using the Storyline templates (or create your own) so the interactions are supported in HTML5.

Got it. Thanks.

I tried pulling in a previously created engage slide and it worked fine when published (not as a preview, but when published). I was not able to get to the next or previous slide however. The previous and next buttons didn't appear and my settings for the slide triggers using the left and right arrow keys didn't work. I'm stuck on the Engage slide. What did I do wrong?

Also, I assume these type slides are not able to be adjusted in any way that would make them 508 compliant, right, even if I can get them to advance properly?

And, how about placing a menu at the left that shows the slide titles? I tried the tab key with a menu and it seems it would go through each title on every slide. So are menus "out" for 508?