JAWS does not read notes

Apr 17, 2014

How do I get JAWS to read the Notes panel in Articulate '13 published files?

12 Replies
Brian Batt

Hi Veronda,

I just tested our output using Internet Explorer 11 and JAWS 15 and it reads the notes without any issues.  I've found that other browsers like Chrome don't work well with screen readers.  Thus, if you're using JAWS, stick with IE and you should be fine.

If you'd like to use other browsers, I'd recommend a screen reader called NVDA.  I found it to be more consistent and stable than JAWS in most envrionments:

http://www.nvaccess.org/

Ashley Schwartau

Hi! Question!

We're trying to get a course with a quiz to work for a client who has some users who rely on a JAWS reader. They have been able to navigate through the entire course without incident but when they reach the final quiz, the reader isn't picking up the questions or the Submit button. There's no way for them to finish the course. The quiz is entirely text based multiple choice questions (no images, no audio, no video, etc) so is there something we need to do in the publishing to ensure that the text in the quiz will be picked up by the reader?

Christine Hendrickson

Hi Ashley,

If you're using Quizmaker '13, you'll want to use the "Size and Position" option on your question text and answers to enable the Alt Text for screen readers. You'll also want to make sure that the option for accessibility tools is enabled on these objects. 

If that option isn't enabled, JAWS won't see or read that content. 

Let us know if you try this and still have trouble.

Thanks!

Christine Hendrickson

Hi Ashley,

When using Jaws or another screen reader, you would need to enable each item and text on the screen to be visible to accessibility tools as described here.

Also, for future reference:

If it's an image or other object, you'll also want to include some alt text so that the screen reader accesses that instead of the file name of the object/image itself.  If the text is part of a video, you may want to look at using the notes feature in Storyline or setting up a closed captioning behavior. 

I also wanted to share some additional documentation here on Storyline's 508 compliance. 

If you still have trouble, you may also want to check out Justin's suggestions in this thread.

If you're still having trouble, or JAWS still won't read the text, you're welcome to share the project's .story file here. While I don't personally run JAWS on this machine, perhaps others could take a look and provide some solutions.

Best,

Christine

Ashley Schwartau

Thanks for all those links. 

We understand that we need to enable each item and text on the screen to be visible to accessibility tools. That is a default setting which we do not turn off. 

Our quiz slides literally just have text boxes on them. No objects. No pictures. No videos. What we want to know is will the reader pick up the text by itself or do we need to change the alt text for the text items? Is the reader reading the text that is on the slide (Part A of the image) or the names of the text boxes (Part B of the image)? Just trying to figure out if going in and adding Alt Text for text is necessary. 

Christine Hendrickson

Hi Ashley,

Although every screen reader is different, as this article explains, screen readers will generally announce each object on the slide according to the object names on the Storyline timeline.

Having said that, however, our team earlier tested this published output in IE 10/JAWS 14 and found that JAWS picked up the question and the answer choices without entering any Alt Text. So, JAWS may not require you to add any additional information. 

What I would do is create a text project, publish and test. If JAWS is not picking up specific text, make a note that you need to add ALT text for that type of object (text, etc.). 

Let us know how it goes and if you have any questions!

Best,

Christine

This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.