New in Rise: More accessibility, the ability to copy lessons to other courses, and more

Nov 14, 2017

Trina Rimmer
By Trina Rimmer

Hello, everyone!

We’re thrilled to announce several new features that’ll help you build more accessible courses and author more quickly in Rise. Here are the highlights:

  • Keyboard-accessible navigation: Learners can now navigate Rise courses entirely with their keyboards. And because keyboard accessibility is built right into the published output, you don’t need to do a thing to make it happen. (Coming soon.)
  • Higher contrast for accessibility: Built-in course features, such as buttons and icons, have a higher contrast between foreground and background colors, so they’re easier to read.
  • Copy lessons to other courses: Reuse existing content and create courses faster by copying lessons across your Rise courses.
  • Custom fonts. Personalize your Rise courses with custom fonts for heading and body text.
  • Multiple-response questions: Make sure learners understand course content with the new multiple-response quiz lesson. You can create assessments with more than one correct answer.
  • Fill-in-the-blank questions: Challenge learners to recall key words or phrases from your course content with the fill-in-the-blank quiz lesson.
  • Matching questions: With the new drag-and-drop matching quiz lesson, you can make an interactive assessment that includes up to 10 text-based matching pairs. (Coming soon.)

Check out our What’s New page to learn more about these features, and what’s new in Storyline 360 and Content Library.

53 Replies
Steve Blane
over 6 years ago01/13/18 at 3:30 pm (UTC)

I was so excited to see the “can now navigate” and then saddened by the coming soon. This should be the top priority for Rise, not fill in the blank questions, not remove the menu but making it accessible for everyone. It is literally useless for progressive organizations that treat all people equally without keyboard navigation. 

I’m starting a new project this week, developing six modules that need to be mobile first and if we can’t have a definitive answer on keyboard accessibility, we’ll be dropping 360 and going to DominKnow. 

Mike Olivieri
over 6 years ago01/13/18 at 10:50 pm (UTC)

Steve, we agree that making Rise courses accessible for everyone needs to be a top priority. Over the past few weeks, we've been releasing updates to improve this experience. Here's a list of those updates - which are available now. https://articulate.fyi/2r7XCyf

We're feeling really good about the feature set and just fixing a few minor cross browser issues. Keep your eye out for the official documentation, coming real soon.

Mike Olivieri
6 years ago03/08/18 at 3:52 pm (UTC)

Hi everyone,

We know that accessibility in Rise is essential. We’re making it a priority to make sure everyone can use Rise courses.

Our ultimate goal is to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). We’ve already taken some initial steps to meet that goal. For example, we’ve increased the contrast for built-in course features, added alt text for images, and added keyboard-accessible navigation. We’re currently working on full screen reader support.

We know there’s more to be done and we’d love your input. If you’re interested in helping us make Rise more accessible, please sign up for the private beta forum on E-Learning Heroes. We’ll release product updates to this beta and gather your feedback to refine Rise accessibility features.

We appreciate your support. Thank you!

Kimberly Graham
6 years ago03/22/18 at 2:22 pm (UTC)

I'm new to Rise and am really loving it. There are two issues I'm having as far as accessibility is concerned. While testing, these two things are dealbreakers and we could use some help.

1. The page headings are not listed as headings and therefore will not be read as headings on a screen reader. Is there any way you guys can label those as H1 in the code?

2. I've loaded a dark background image for the course homepage which is fine to read the title, but when tested, it is showing up as white text on a white background. If the background image fails to load at some point, we are left with white text on a white background. Would it be possible to have the option to set the background color to black in the event the background image becomes an issue?

Any guidance you could provide would be appreciated.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard
over 5 years ago08/09/18 at 4:45 pm (UTC)

Hi Julie,

Yup! You can read all about our keyboard navigation here.

Also, here's the details on using it with a sorting activity:

Sorting Activity Lessons

  • Use the Tab key to select a category (drop target).
  • After selecting a category, use Tab and Shift+Tab or the Left and Right arrow keys to cycle through the categories.
  • Select the category that matches the item that’s currently displayed, then press Enter or the spacebar to move the item to the selected category. If the answer is correct, the item will move briefly to the category then disappear. If the answer is wrong, the item will shake briefly, then you can select a different category and try again.
Arin O'Boyle
over 5 years ago09/17/18 at 8:44 pm (UTC)

Hi Kimberly,

I was wondering if anyone had answered your questions above? I couldn't see in this discussion board any answers from an Articulate staff member- and I had a similar question about the headings so I was wondering if it was already fixed and I just missed it, or if I should write to them as well-

Thought I would check!

Thanks!

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard
over 5 years ago09/18/18 at 2:43 pm (UTC)

Whoops! Looks like we missed it, Arin, so thanks for bringing it back up. 

I looked at Kimberly images, and saw the white text on her cover image, but the background color does appear dark. I'm not sure when she saw the images not loading, but that's something we'd want to investigate further! Currently there isn't an option to switch the text color if a piece of a course doesn't load. 

Also, we're still working on full screen reader support, so you'll want to keep an eye on our “What’s New” page and our Rise Version history. We'll also update discussions like this one with any accessibility news. 

Thomas Lehning
5 years ago02/05/19 at 4:29 pm (UTC)

Revently I have sent a complete Accessability Re-Test from my client to your team and hope that it will be interesting for you. One of the biggest problems for us is, that we could not enlarge the size of navigational Fonts. I have  attached some examples in. Do you know if and when there will come an update for this? Thank you very much, Thomas

Allison LaMotte
5 years ago02/06/19 at 10:11 am (UTC)

Hi Thomas,

Thanks so much for taking the time to do that, it's super helpful! Unfortunately, I don't have a timeline for you on this. Looks like you're currently communicating with our support team, so I'll let them continue working with you on this.

If there's anything else I can do to help, please let me know!

Eric Fox
5 years ago03/05/19 at 12:19 am (UTC)

One simple change that would improve accessibility is to actually make color contrast levels meet WCAG standards. Some of the default accent colors (e.g., orange), for example, are presented as the background for buttons with white text, but the contrast is not strong enough to meet any level of WCAG compliance. For such colors, a darker color should be used for text (the default orange is okay with black text, for example). Or perhaps a warning could be given to the author about the lack of contrast and WCAG standards?

Jon Ellinor
5 years ago03/18/19 at 11:05 am (UTC)

Hi... I have built a course using Rise which has a few interactive Storyline activities within it. When navigating the course with the tab key on the keyboard, the Storyline content is bypassed. Please could I be advised as to how to interact with the Storyline content without clicking on to it with a mouse? It is important for our courses to be 100% accessible using a keyboard.

Thanks

Jon

Here is a link: https://rise.articulate.com/share/Qm7q9phnK7azN2LG4mWSTIUfs3Itdrr8 

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