I am having a new issue with all my Rise Courses. When I publish to Review or my LMS, the alt text is not there. You can not see it in Preview mode either. I have quadruple checked that alt text was added to the images. This is new as of last week. Was there an update that may have changed something? Any ideas on what is going on?
I was just informed by an Articulate support rep that this is an intentional upgrade.
"We made an Accessibility improvement to the way images with alt text are published by removing the "title" attribute. By doing this, the display alt text will not show when you hover over the image. The alt text is still there, and screen readers will still read it. You can check this by inspecting the image (using Google Chrome, right-click the image and select "Inspect") to see the alt text.
We removed it because it adds noise to the screen reader by reading it twice. Screen readers will read the alt text, and it will also read the title attribute."
If this is in fact correct, the last upgrade is listed as 08/10, however, alt text was working up to last week. So what happened between the last upgrade and last week?
We recently made an accessibility improvements that involved streamlining the implementation of image text alternatives, making our HTML more semantically correct so that the content is announced better by assistive technologies. The alternative text you set on your images should be intact and continue to work as intended - but it should no longer appear like a tooltip when you hover on the image. If you'd like to make sure they are there, you can either edit the block and verify that your images still have the "ALT" badge on the thumbnail, or right-click the image -> Inspect element to see the `alt` attribute is set on the image itself.
We removed the `title` attribute in the figure because it was unnecessary. It holds redundant information and just adding noise when screen reader announces the image. Our goal is to make the screen reader announce the content of a lesson as meaningful and as efficient as possible.
There are 2 important things worth mentioning here:
1. Images will no longer be announced twice when using a screen reader. It will no longer be distracting, if not disorienting.
2. Explicitly using quotations as the `alt` value completely hides the image from the screen reader as intended. It will no longer announce the image file name, and will no longer display the quotations as tooltips in some cases.
I do not see this update listed on the Version History page. The last update was on 08/10 and I have published courses since then with the Alt Text or "title" tag still showing on an image when moused over. How are we to know when updates like this occur if they are not listed on the version history page?
Can you please let me know when this update occurred? I need to reconcile which of my courses need to be republished and repacked from the LMS to ensure consistency.
I understand your goal to reduce screen reader noise to improve the learning experience for visually impaired learners.
That said, I wonder if there’s another way to achieve this. I ask because when my team develops content in Rise, we require ALT text to support accessibility requirements. We include a check for the ALT text in our QA process. This used to require a quick hover of the mouse pointer to both verify that ALT text was present and to validate its content. With the update, I’ll need to inspect every single image. This will dramatically impact our QA process.
Is there a way to compromise on this? Perhaps keep the title attribute in Rise (edit and Preview modes) and Review, but remove it when published to SCORM or HTML? Another way to look at it: retain the hover function during all phases of development and review, but remove it from the public-facing output.
I’m sorry that the change we made in Rise 360 on 09/01/20 negatively impacted your course authoring workflow. We chose to remove the “title” attribute that appeared when hovering over an image because it creates issues for learners using screen readers. The “title” attribute causes screen readers to announce the alt text twice, which is distracting for those learners. We didn’t include this change in the version history page because we didn't realize how it would affect course authors.
After speaking with both of you in your support cases, we now understand that course authors hover over images to quickly verify alt text while reviewing the course for accessibility. Now that we’ve removed the “title” attribute, you can right-click any image and select Inspect. The alt text will appear immediately below the image, shown here. Aside from that, are there other barriers that this change presents to your team?
From here, we will be more careful to announce any changes we make to Rise 360 so you can be better informed of new updates and enhancements. We’re also crafting an Accessibility Journal where we will log all changes related to accessibility in Rise 360 — this is coming soon!
As always, we love to hear your feedback, so thank you for letting us know how we can do better.
I noticed that, after this update to Rise, screen reader is not reading the image alt text at all. Because of this, I am having an impact on my on going courses. Is there any quick fix for this?
Our team is hard at work on screen reader support as we speak, and that's why we made this change to improve the screen reader experience. However, screen reader support isn't fully ready yet. If you use a screen reader on a Rise 360 course now, you may find that it doesn't perform well.
We'll let you know when you can use a screen reader with Rise 360!
Hi Gouri, I'm curious to know more about your image alt text aren't announced by screen reader. Would you mind double-checking that the image indeed have an alternative text set, and that it is not set to double quotation? You probably already know this, but setting your alternative text to "" will make the screen reader skip your image. If you have a course to share, I'll be more than happy to check it against a screen reader.
Yes, I did check for the multiple times. Even, the alt text is appearing while inspecting. but it is not reading by the windows narrator. Also, I re-published the source of previously developed and deployed course in the new Rise version, that too doesn't work. However, course published using older Rise version is accurate
Yes, I did check for the multiple times. Even, the alt text is appearing while inspecting. but it is not reading by the windows narrator. Also, I re-published the source of previously developed and deployed course in the new Rise version, that too doesn't work. However, course published using older Rise version is accurate
Hi Gouri,
I had a chance to try it with Windows Narrator and it works perfectly fine for me. Could it just be a navigation setting or a mode? I must say, it was my first time to use Narrator - it was pretty straight forward but it needs a little of getting used to :D. I recorded my experience and how it announced my alternative text for the images:
However, I would like to echo what Alyssa said in a previous comment - Accessibility is a work in progress and that screen reader support is not 100% for primetime. I just want to give you a bit of peace of mind that your alternative text are intact and that screen readers, including Narrator is announcing it gracefully.
Yeah, yours is working absolutely correct on windows narrator. I am not sure about navigation settings or mode, as it is consistent with my previous Rise courses, which are announcing well on Narrator.
Is there any specific setting or mode for the accessibility?
How about try to be in scan mode (Narrator + Spacebar)? I also find that NVDA , in tandem with Firefox is easier to use & navigate on web pages, in case you are considering to try another tool.
FWIW, none of the a11y work we did for the alternative text and images have adversely affected any screen readers. In fact, it made screen readers announce the images better and way more intuitively than before because we improved our semantics as well.
15 Replies
I am experiencing this new behavior, too. I just submitted a support ticket describing this issue.
I was just informed by an Articulate support rep that this is an intentional upgrade.
"We made an Accessibility improvement to the way images with alt text are published by removing the "title" attribute. By doing this, the display alt text will not show when you hover over the image. The alt text is still there, and screen readers will still read it. You can check this by inspecting the image (using Google Chrome, right-click the image and select "Inspect") to see the alt text.
We removed it because it adds noise to the screen reader by reading it twice. Screen readers will read the alt text, and it will also read the title attribute."
If this is in fact correct, the last upgrade is listed as 08/10, however, alt text was working up to last week. So what happened between the last upgrade and last week?
Hi Susan,
We recently made an accessibility improvements that involved streamlining the implementation of image text alternatives, making our HTML more semantically correct so that the content is announced better by assistive technologies. The alternative text you set on your images should be intact and continue to work as intended - but it should no longer appear like a tooltip when you hover on the image. If you'd like to make sure they are there, you can either edit the block and verify that your images still have the "ALT" badge on the thumbnail, or right-click the image -> Inspect element to see the `alt` attribute is set on the image itself.
We removed the `title` attribute in the figure because it was unnecessary. It holds redundant information and just adding noise when screen reader announces the image. Our goal is to make the screen reader announce the content of a lesson as meaningful and as efficient as possible.
There are 2 important things worth mentioning here:
1. Images will no longer be announced twice when using a screen reader. It will no longer be distracting, if not disorienting.
2. Explicitly using quotations as the `alt` value completely hides the image from the screen reader as intended. It will no longer announce the image file name, and will no longer display the quotations as tooltips in some cases.
Hope this information helps! Cheers!
Marvie
Hi Marvie,
I do not see this update listed on the Version History page. The last update was on 08/10 and I have published courses since then with the Alt Text or "title" tag still showing on an image when moused over. How are we to know when updates like this occur if they are not listed on the version history page?
Can you please let me know when this update occurred? I need to reconcile which of my courses need to be republished and repacked from the LMS to ensure consistency.
Thanks so much!
Susan
I understand your goal to reduce screen reader noise to improve the learning experience for visually impaired learners.
That said, I wonder if there’s another way to achieve this. I ask because when my team develops content in Rise, we require ALT text to support accessibility requirements. We include a check for the ALT text in our QA process. This used to require a quick hover of the mouse pointer to both verify that ALT text was present and to validate its content. With the update, I’ll need to inspect every single image. This will dramatically impact our QA process.
Is there a way to compromise on this? Perhaps keep the title attribute in Rise (edit and Preview modes) and Review, but remove it when published to SCORM or HTML? Another way to look at it: retain the hover function during all phases of development and review, but remove it from the public-facing output.
Thanks!
Hi Susan and Jay,
I’m sorry that the change we made in Rise 360 on 09/01/20 negatively impacted your course authoring workflow. We chose to remove the “title” attribute that appeared when hovering over an image because it creates issues for learners using screen readers. The “title” attribute causes screen readers to announce the alt text twice, which is distracting for those learners. We didn’t include this change in the version history page because we didn't realize how it would affect course authors.
After speaking with both of you in your support cases, we now understand that course authors hover over images to quickly verify alt text while reviewing the course for accessibility. Now that we’ve removed the “title” attribute, you can right-click any image and select Inspect. The alt text will appear immediately below the image, shown here. Aside from that, are there other barriers that this change presents to your team?
From here, we will be more careful to announce any changes we make to Rise 360 so you can be better informed of new updates and enhancements. We’re also crafting an Accessibility Journal where we will log all changes related to accessibility in Rise 360 — this is coming soon!
As always, we love to hear your feedback, so thank you for letting us know how we can do better.
Hi Alyssa,
I noticed that, after this update to Rise, screen reader is not reading the image alt text at all. Because of this, I am having an impact on my on going courses. Is there any quick fix for this?
Hi Gouri!
Our team is hard at work on screen reader support as we speak, and that's why we made this change to improve the screen reader experience. However, screen reader support isn't fully ready yet. If you use a screen reader on a Rise 360 course now, you may find that it doesn't perform well.
We'll let you know when you can use a screen reader with Rise 360!
Hi Gouri, I'm curious to know more about your image alt text aren't announced by screen reader. Would you mind double-checking that the image indeed have an alternative text set, and that it is not set to double quotation? You probably already know this, but setting your alternative text to "" will make the screen reader skip your image. If you have a course to share, I'll be more than happy to check it against a screen reader.
Hi Marvie,
Yes, I did check for the multiple times. Even, the alt text is appearing while inspecting. but it is not reading by the windows narrator. Also, I re-published the source of previously developed and deployed course in the new Rise version, that too doesn't work. However, course published using older Rise version is accurate
Sadly, I would not be able to share the course due to security restrictions.
ok no worries - i'll give Windows Narrator a go! Just want to mention that I checked this out on NVDA & Voice Over and they are announcing.
Hi Gouri,
I had a chance to try it with Windows Narrator and it works perfectly fine for me. Could it just be a navigation setting or a mode? I must say, it was my first time to use Narrator - it was pretty straight forward but it needs a little of getting used to :D. I recorded my experience and how it announced my alternative text for the images:
https://360.articulate.com/review/content/7b181435-f66a-4865-891e-a4f59b6f9310/review
However, I would like to echo what Alyssa said in a previous comment - Accessibility is a work in progress and that screen reader support is not 100% for primetime. I just want to give you a bit of peace of mind that your alternative text are intact and that screen readers, including Narrator is announcing it gracefully.
Cheers! Hope it helps!
Marvie
Yeah, yours is working absolutely correct on windows narrator. I am not sure about navigation settings or mode, as it is consistent with my previous Rise courses, which are announcing well on Narrator.
Is there any specific setting or mode for the accessibility?
How about try to be in scan mode (Narrator + Spacebar)? I also find that NVDA , in tandem with Firefox is easier to use & navigate on web pages, in case you are considering to try another tool.
FWIW, none of the a11y work we did for the alternative text and images have adversely affected any screen readers. In fact, it made screen readers announce the images better and way more intuitively than before because we improved our semantics as well.
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