How Do Screen Readers Work With Articulate Storyline Courses?
Hello, everyone! I had to take a brief leave of absence for a few months, but I’m back! I did work on a few things while I was out, including this video I created for ATD.
Perhaps you’re familiar with the concept of screen readers, such as NVDA and JAWS, and the fact that someone who is blind or has limited vision might use them to navigate your courses. But have you ever experienced a screen reader yourself? Do you know how screen readers interact with Articulate Storyline content?
In this video, I go through two screens of an Articulate Storyline 360 course with the NVDA screen reader. The first time, I go through the slides using all the defaults in Storyline. The second time, I go through again with the accessibility features set up.
This video will give you a general understanding of how screen readers work, as well as an appreciation for how important it is to optimize your slides for someone who uses a screen reader.
Update: It looks as though ATD’s YouTube channel has moved. You can find the video here.
Previous Post
Next Post
Thanks so much Diane. This was really helpful! I knew NOTHING about screen readers. This was a good start!
Glad it was helpful!
Hello, Diane,
The optimization works really well in Chrome. But in FireFox, when we try to navigate our same Articulate workshop with the Tab button, there seem to be 24 unidentified tab stops before we can activate, say, the Play button on the first overlay, and then between our Articulate slide and the main web page it is on. Do you think FireFox is picking up the elements we tried to not include in our focus order?
Hello, Maki, I’ve not done a lot of testing in FireFox myself, but I’ll do some testing. A few questions first. What screen readere are you using? And are you running the course from an LMS? (I’ve experienced issues where it’s the LMS logic that causes extra tab stops.)
Hello, Diane, Thanks for your reply. I just used my keyboard, but our accessibility specialist tested with both JAWS and NVDA. This issue occurs in Articulate Review, SCORM Cloud, and our LMS. It does seem the stops are inside Articulate. In fact, I think we’ve narrowed it down to the videos in the workshop. In a workshop with 22 video slides, there are 24 extra tab stops. In a workshop with 7 video slides, there are 11 extra tab stops. (Only in FireFox, although I suspect it might be affecting VoiceOver on the iPhone.) I did post on the eLearning Heros forum. If you would like the link, I’d be happy to send it over.
Hi! The video seems to be unavailable.
Thanks. It looks as though ATD has moved their YouTube channel. The post now has an updated link.
This was POWERFUL! Thank you so much for creating this. I had no idea how the content I built interacted with screen readers.