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10 STORYLINE 360 FEATURES THAT’LL HELP YOU DESIGN ACCESSIBLE E-LEARNING

By Community Team

For many organizations, creating accessible e-learning is both a
mission-critical business goal and a legal requirement. The good news is that
Storyline 360 has the features you need to create e-learning that meets Web
Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). In this article, we’ll walk you through
some of the key Storyline 360 features that’ll help you create accessible
courses.


1. ACCESSIBLE PLAYER

The Storyline 360 modern player has built-in accessibility features that make it
possible for learners with a variety of screen readers to interact with the
course controls without any manual tweaking on your part. It also meets and
exceeds WCAG Level AA guidelines for visual contrast and color.

Interested in learning more about the built-in accessibility features in the
Storyline 360 player? Check out these articles: 

 * The Accessible Player Makes Navigation Easier
 * Modern Player Accessible Contrast


2. ACCESSIBLE TEXT

This powerful feature allows learners to adjust the size and style of course
text—using custom stylesheets or browser extensions—making it more readable and
accessible than ever. Learn more about how that works in these helpful
resources: 

 * Storyline 360 Accessible Text
 * Accessible Text Features in Storyline 360


3. ACCESSIBLE TEXT STYLES

Accessible text styles not only create more design consistency, but they also
help screen readers. That’s because this feature shares the hierarchy of
information with screen readers so they can identify and announce headings,
hyperlinks, quotes, and other custom text. For more information, head over
here: 

 * Using Text Styles
 * Accessible Text Features in Storyline 360


4. TEXT AUTOFIT

When it comes to making sure all your learners can access your content, another
important thing to consider is text size. After all, if your copy is too small,
learners might have trouble reading it. With the text autofit feature, you can
set textboxes to a fixed size without shrinking the text if it overflows—so you
know your learners will be able to read it easily. Learn more about this feature
here: Text Autofit Improvements.


5. ACCESSIBILITY CONTROLS

Empower learners to personalize their experience by turning on the accessible
controls in the course player. These controls allow learners to change the zoom
mode*, turn accessible text on or off, and toggle keyboard shortcuts. Learn more
in this article: Adjustable Accessibility Settings.


6. TWO-COLOR FOCUS INDICATOR

When learners navigate using a keyboard, there’s an outline—called a focus
indicator—that highlights the object they’re currently selecting. Without focus
indicators, these learners won’t know where they are on the page—so it’s pretty
important. 

In Storyline 360, you can now choose not just one focus color, but two! This
helps learners clearly see the focus indicators on both dark and light
backgrounds. To learn more about this superhelpful feature, head over to this
article: Two-Color Focus Indicator.


7. CLOSED CAPTIONS

Closed captions aren’t just for learners with hearing impairments. They’re also
great for people who are taking your course in a language they’re still
learning, are in a noisy environment, or have cognitive disabilities, for
example. That’s why it’s so important to include closed captions for any audio
or video content you choose to include in your course. Learn how to do that in
these helpful resources:

 * Importing Closed Captions for Narration and Videos
 * Creating and Editing Closed Captions with the Built-In Editor


8. COURSE PLAYER & CLOSED CAPTIONS FONT SIZE

Because using different fonts impacts the perceived size of text, Storyline 360
allows you to customize the size of your course player labels and closed
captions. Learn how to do that here:

 * Choosing a Font for Your Course Player
 * Choosing a Font for Your Closed Captions


9. ALTERNATIVE (ALT) TEXT

Alt text is important for learners who can’t see the images, graphics, or videos
on the screen. It provides a description of the multimedia objects for screen
readers to read aloud. 

You should add alt text to all slide objects that convey meaning or context to
the learner. Thankfully, adding alt text is supereasy in Storyline 360. Here’s
an article that’ll walk you through the steps for images within your course:
Storyline 360: Adding Alternative Text for Screen Readers. And here’s another
one for adding alt text to a logo that’s embedded in the course player: Adding
Alt Text to Your Logo.


10. CUSTOM FOCUS ORDER

Focus order is the order in which screen readers announce on-screen objects.
It’s superimportant that the focus order be logical, or it’ll make for a
confusing experience for your screen reader users. (Head over here for a more
detailed explanation about why focus order matters: 4 Things to Know About
Storyline 360 Courses and Screen Readers.) Luckily, that’s something you can
easily customize as the course author. Here’s a tutorial that walks you through
how to use this feature, step by step: Customizing the Focus Order of Slide
Objects.


WRAP-UP

As you can see, Storyline 360 has a ton of accessibility features to help you
create courses that work for all your learners. But we’re always hard at work to
bring you even more! Stay tuned to our feature road map to see what’s on the
horizon.

And if you’re looking for more accessibility-related resources, check out the
links below:

 * All About Accessibility
 * Articulate 360 FAQs: Accessibility
 * Storyline 360: How to Design an Accessible Course
 * Storyline 3: How to Design an Accessible Course

Want to try using these features to create an accessible course, but don’t have
Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial, and come back to E-Learning Heroes
regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you
have any questions, please share them in the comments.

 

* The accessibility settings work in both the modern player and classic player,
the zoom-to-fit control, however, only appears in the modern player.

RELATED SERIES

 * All About Accessibility
 * Nicole's Articles
 * Community Team Articles

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Bianca Woods
 * 1 Comment

7 COMMENT

 * Peter Mattsson

over 4 years ago04/11/18 at 2:16 pm (UTC)
What a great article. Thanx!
 * Reply
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 * over 4 years ago04/11/18 at 2:16 pm (UTC)

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 * John Curran

4 years ago06/18/18 at 8:21 am (UTC)
Can anyone recommend a free or ideally a cloud based screen reader to test
Articulate content?
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 * 4 years ago06/18/18 at 8:21 am (UTC)

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 * Matthew Bibby

4 years ago06/18/18 at 10:06 am (UTC)

Technically, Articulate 360 only works with JAWS 16 in one of the supported
browsers:
https://articulate.com/support/article/Articulate-Storyline-360-Is-Compliant-with-Section-508-Accessibility-Guidelines#screen-reader.
You can get a trial version of JAWS to do initial tests. However, some have
found that NVDA (which is free) works okay with Storyline. There are some cases
where it can be buggy, search the forums for discussions containing NVDA (e.g.,
here is one post:
https://community.articulate.com/discussions/building-better-courses/nvda-screen-reader).
That being said, if NVDA doesn't work as expected, that's not something that
Articulate can help you with as they make no claims of it working with their
products. I'd love to see Articulate do better in this area. Of part... Expand

Technically, Articulate 360 only works with JAWS 16 in one of the supported
browsers:
https://articulate.com/support/article/Articulate-Storyline-360-Is-Compliant-with-Section-508-Accessibility-Guidelines#screen-reader.
You can get a trial version of JAWS to do initial tests. However, some have
found that NVDA (which is free) works okay with Storyline. There are some cases
where it can be buggy, search the forums for discussions containing NVDA (e.g.,
here is one post:
https://community.articulate.com/discussions/building-better-courses/nvda-screen-reader).
That being said, if NVDA doesn't work as expected, that's not something that
Articulate can help you with as they make no claims of it working with their
products. I'd love to see Articulate do better in this area. Of particulate
importance, is supporting Mac's VoiceOver as I've found that due to Apple's high
focus on accessibility iPad's and iPhone's are the devices of choice for many
who rely on screen readers. Anyway, I'm sure this will happen in time.
 * Reply
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 * 4 years ago06/18/18 at 10:06 am (UTC)
 * Edited

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 * Nicole Legault
 * Matthew Bibby

4 years ago06/25/18 at 2:31 pm (UTC)
Thank you for your thoughtful and informed comment Matthew (as usual!)
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 * 4 years ago06/25/18 at 2:31 pm (UTC)

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 * John Curran

4 years ago06/26/18 at 8:53 am (UTC)
Thanks Matthew...that's really helpful. It's hard to imagine some of the issues
people with disabilities come across when using e-learning so I'm keen to get a
feel for the key issues and either build courses that make life easier or
recommend third party tools that can help (or ideally a combination of both).
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 * 4 years ago06/26/18 at 8:53 am (UTC)

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 * Nicole Legault
 * John Curran

4 years ago07/10/18 at 4:58 pm (UTC)
It's amazing how eye-opening it is to use a screen reader and actually
experience that.
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 * 4 years ago07/10/18 at 4:58 pm (UTC)

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 * John Curran
 * Nicole Legault

4 years ago07/11/18 at 7:40 am (UTC)
Yes Nicole...a good example where empathy for the learner is pretty important.
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 * 4 years ago07/11/18 at 7:40 am (UTC)

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