[Athen] Articulate 360 and accessibility

[Kowalik, Eric]

Hi Chris,

I use Storyline 3 quite a bit and I agree, it is a great product. From my understanding Storyline 3 is similar to Storyline 360 with one difference being Storyline 3 you can buy via a one time fee wheras Storyline 360 is a subscription based service.

Below are some accessibility related things I've learned while using the product:


  *   Interactive features such as drag and drop and hotspots are NOT accessible and Articulate is pretty up front about what is accessible and what is not you can check ou this page for more information - https://articulate.com/support/article/Articulate-360-FAQs-Accessibility

  *   If you include a link in a text box, the screen reader isn't able to get to the link to open it. A work around is to create a transparent box that links to your link and place this over the link location in the text box.

  *   I've found in testing their quiz drop down menus that NVDA does not read the contents of the drop down menus.

  *   If you include iFrame content, for example a YouTube video, there isn't a way to access the YouTube video player and its controls, for example turning on CC, fast forwarding, etc. A clunky work around removing the iFrame from the screen reader and creating a transparent shape that when clicked will open a new window with the video.

  *   JAWS is their screen reader of choice, if it works in JAWS and not in another screen reader, such as NVDA or Voiceover they have not been particularly helpful trying to troubleshoot the problem.

While there are certain accessibility issues with the latest Storyline, it has come a long way in regards to accessibility from Storyline and Storyline 2 and the HTML 5 out put is much better, allowing you to move on from Flash.

A few other notes:

  *   You mentioned the ability to elect whether a graphic object is visible to accessibility tools which is great. You also have the ability to edit the tab order which is also very helpful as sometimes items don't tab in a logical order, so having the ability to remedy that is great.

  *   The Storyline user community is very active and helpful, I often find a lot of great ideas and suggested work arounds for some of the accessibility issues by checking out their community forums - https://community.articulate.com/discuss

-Eric


________________________________
From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman13.u.washington.edu> on behalf of Christine Robinson <crobinson at ggc.edu>
Sent: Monday, February 26, 2018 8:30 AM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network; The EDUCAUSE IT Accessibility Constituent Group Listserv
Subject: [Athen] Articulate 360 and accessibility


Hi all –

Can anyone out there give me information about the accessibility features of the authoring tool, Articulate 360?

I’ve been playing around with one of the apps, Storyline 360, and so far I like its features for adding interactivity to training modules. However, I’m concerned about the degree to which published content would be accessible.

I see that Storyline 360 has some accessibility features built in, such as the ability to add alt text for graphics, and also the ability to elect whether a graphic object is visible to accessibility tools. The latter seems like a great feature, to keep screen readers from bothering about images that are purely decorative.

However, particularly with some of Storyline’s “Interactive Objects” like buttons, sliders, and hotspots, I wonder how navigable these are for screen readers.

If you have experience using the Articulate 360 suite, please share! I like this software’s features but I don’t want to publish with it unless it’s accessible.

Many thanks,

Chris

Christine Robinson | Technical Trainer/Writer | Center for Teaching Excellence

Georgia Gwinnett College | 1000 University Center Lane | Lawrenceville, GA 30043


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