[NFBCS] Inaccessible Litmos/Storyline 360 trainings

[Steve Jacobson]

Mike,

While following Jim's advice is one path to follow and a good one at that, I have had mixed results doing that because of employee turn-over.  I have found that often courses that seem to be not accessible often simply don't have obvious documentation as to what you should do.  I don't know if I have taken courses from the same platform or not but here are some things I have found over the years.

First, if these are web-based courses, occasionally you may find they work better on an IOS device.  Of course, you would have to have a connection to the network where the course resides which is not always possible.

Second, some of these courses work best with the virtual cursor turned off in JAWS using JAWSKEY and Z.  With NVDA, experiment with the NVDA key and SPACEE.  I don't remember NVDA's terminology, but when you hear a beep you are usually in the mode where you can type into fields, for example, and this may also make it possible to navigate the application.

Sometimes the descriptions tied to buttons and graphics can give a hint as to what it does.  Most of my courses do seem to have "previous" and "NEXT" buttons, but I've had courses with the "right pointing triangle" instead.  What you do with the buttons varies.  Some of these buttons do not activate with the SPACE bar, for example but require ENTER.

I've also had courses where the next slide can be accessed using the PGDN key, but of course the use of a virtual cursor must be off.  Even the DOWN ARROW has moved me to the next slide in some cases.  When these keys have worked, I've never found any documentation that indicates these as alternatives.

I have also seen a tree of all of the slides where a press of the DOWN ARROW will move you to the next slide.

Since I find it takes me longer to finish many courses because of my need to understand and out-guess the interface, I seldom pass up a chance to fill out a feedback form.  During my twenty-five years of taking online courses at work, I have never gotten a single response, though, but I would urge you to do it anyway.  Just don't spend a lot of time explaining all of the details of your frustration.  In a feedback form, push the idea that you would like to talk to somebody to see if there might be information that would make it easier to take courses in the future.  Unfortunately, I've tried that without success as well.

This subject really frustrates me because there is no practical reason these courses have to be so hard to navigate.  I think I reached the height of my frustration when a course on diversity required me to identify the characteristics of a picture to get past a certain point in the course.  Ironically, in almost all cases, courses I take have reasonably accessible quizzes, or "knowledge assessments" as they call them.  They are glad to test me, just not to teach me anything.  Good luck.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson



-----Original Message-----
From: NFBCS <nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Mike Gorse via NFBCS
Sent: Monday, August 21, 2023 12:42 PM
To: nfbcs at nfbnet.org
Cc: Mike Gorse <mike at straddlethebox.org>
Subject: [NFBCS] Inaccessible Litmos/Storyline 360 trainings

I know I'm not the only one struggling with inaccessible trainings.
Anyway, I have to complete this anti-harassment / anti-discrimination training for work, and I can't even find a control to move the training to the next slide. I'm wondering if anyone has had to deal with a training like that and if there's anything I could do that I might not be trying, so I don't have to keep asking a sighted person to click the button for me with the mouse. I normally use NVDA when I'm not in Linux and using Orca, but I wondered if I'd have better luck using JAWS, so I tried downloading it and couldn't find a next button there either, although I'm not a JAWS expert. There appear to be controls with labels like "Rectangle 1" and "Oval 1," but they don't appear to be clickable. Also, the training is from Litmos, but I took a quick look at the page source and found a comment indicating that the training was created using Storyline 360 from articulate.com, and Articulate claims that courses created using Storyline
360 are accessible with screen readers or can be. So I don't really know who to blame for the training not being accessible. There's a feedback form at the end, and I'm hoping that it gives me a place to complain about the course not being accessible, for whatever good that might do.

Thanks,
-Mike

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