Forum Discussion
Move audio playback bar for Image & Text Blocks
This Image & Text block is a great way to add visual interest to your course modules, but the audio playback bar is tethered to the bottom of the actual image, which can block important detail and is unintuitive for users to find.
In the same way that other blocks allow us to move the playback bar to the top or bottom of eligible blocks, it would be really nice to have the option to move this feature under the text portion of the block instead of pasting it onto the image. This would greatly benefit users, especially those completing modules on mobile devices.
A screenshot has been provided for clarity.
2 Replies
Hi mikeschalk1,
Welcome to the community, and thanks for sharing this idea along with such a clear screenshot. It makes it easy to see how the playback bar sits over the image.
It sounds like you’d like the audio controls to sit under the text in an Image & Text block, so they don’t cover important detail in the image and are easier for learners to find, especially on mobile. At the moment, the audio playback bar appears over the image in that block, and there isn’t a setting to move it. One thing that can help in the meantime is the Collapse audio player button, the first icon on the left of the controls, which shrinks the bar down to a small icon so more of the image shows.
What does the audio add for your learners in this block, such as narrating the text or describing the image?
Ideally, I want all text to be narratable for accessibility - locating the playback bar under the actual text in this block means that the user associates the text to the audio rather than the image. If I have a graphic that visually demonstrates something and then accompanying text, it's far more important to give an unimpeded view of the graphic than anything; I want the narration to read the text, not obscure the image which is demonstrating a visually communicable principle anyway.
Additionally, users accessing training by a mobile phone get a really poor experience with the Image & Text block, since the scaling forces the image to be either under or over the text - In this way, the user is forced to encounter the image first, which is still obscured by the playback bar, or they get the text first and the image 2nd - in this case, it's just confusing. We always want to tie the playback bar to the text, not the image. I can use alt-text for my images as needed, but I really need users to see the playback bar with the text so that they make a mental connection between the text and audio controls. This is especially important for visually impaired learners who might even struggle to see the playback bar altogether if an image is underlaid.
